Top tips for navigating capital project grants, as St Mary’s, Eardisland celebrates new funding award
St Mary’s Church PCC in Eardisland has been awarded £43,097 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund (heritagefund.org.uk) for the initial stage of what will be a much bigger project. St Mary’s Church: Fit for the Future will look at the best route forward for adding basic amenities including a kitchen area and toilets, as well as creating new ways for local people and visitors to engage with the church’s 900-year history. Thanks to National Lottery players, this work will help the church plan for a sustainable future and explore how it can better serve local people and visitors.
This early-stage funding was secured with the help of consultant Hannah Vernon, who also lives in the village and attends St Mary’s. Hannah has worked with over a dozen churches across the diocese to raise project funding.
Hannah explains how working with a consultant can help get projects like this off the ground.
“I used to work for the National Lottery Heritage Fund as a grants officer, and for the Churches Conservation Trust, so I have seen many projects from the other side, which helps. Now I work with churches in the diocese on coordinating projects and developing funding applications, particularly for bigger, capital projects. In 2020 I secured £500,000 for Kingsland Church, and £250,000 more recently for Dorstone Church. The Eardisland project has taken a long time, in part due to covid and people coming and going, but we’re very happy to have reached this milestone.”
Hannah explains some of the stages in funding a project like Eardisland:
“We’ve got a grant to help us with an initial, exploratory stage. This will help us obtain all the information necessary to be able to make a larger funding application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund, when we are ready. This work is usually done by the PCC and their architect, and they sometimes employ a consultant like me. Funding for early development is often available through Herefordshire Historic Churches Trust and the National Churches Trust, which can really help the PCC get started. In this initial stage, we often engage the wider community through surveys and pilot activities. We also work very closely with the diocese’s property team, which is really helpful.
“If successful at securing funding, as in the case of Eardisland, we do things like a feasibility study, architectural planning, community consultation and vision-setting, project branding design, and activity planning. The aim of this particular project is to work out exactly what we want to do, and how we’re going to do it. Then we can apply for permissions and funding for the next phase, when the building work happens and the entire plan is rolled out to the community. If it looks like it's going to be over £250,000, we’ll have to apply to NLHF’s two stage programme: that would mean applying for a development grant to further develop proposals to reach the tender stage, and to obtain some partnership funding. This would then lead to the final application to NLHF, for the delivery stage grant.”
As the work at Eardisland isn’t likely to exceed £250,000, Hannah hopes to apply for a second NLHF grant later this year, so that the new facilities can be installed in the church next year. Hannah continues, “As Eardisland is part of the black-and-white villages trail, it attracts a lot of visitors. With proper, modern facilities, the church can serve visitors and become a more vital part of the community. It can be difficult to hold concerts and even church services without a loo or kitchen!” she says. “People today expect a basic level of amenities.”
We asked Hannah for her view of the recent closure of the Listed Places of Worship Grants Scheme (LPoWGS). “It is adding an extra burden to PCCs hoping to fund building projects, as my understanding is that it will no longer be possible to reclaim the VAT on the cost of adding or improving facilities because as far as we are aware, the replacement scheme will only fund repairs. But we’re waiting to find out more.”
The diocese’s Property Team added, “For churches, that were hoping to submit claims to the LPoWGS by the end of March, there is the possibility that Historic England may be able to provide a grant to cover the VAT for these projects. Historic England has contacted us to ask which churches have been affected by the early closure of the LPoWGS. If your church has been affected, please contact Stephen Challenger with details of the project including the total value of the project and the total amount of eligible VAT that would have been refunded under the LPoWGS.”
For more information about capital grants please see the Property Team pages of the website.