The UK Government announced last week that the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme (LPWGS), will be ending on 31st March 2026, some 25 years after it was introduced by Gordon Brown when he was the UK Chancellor. In our latest blog, we reflect on what this change means for Scotland and its listed places of worship.

Launched in 2001 and administered by the Department of Culture Media and Sport, this grant scheme allowed the owners of any listed places of worship, of any denomination or faith, anywhere in the British Isles and Northern Ireland to apply for a grant equal to the VAT charged on any repair to their building that cost over £1000.

We published a blog on this site almost exactly a year ago, in which we expressed our concerns about the possibility that this important and well-used scheme might be scrapped. At that time we explored the most recent available public figures for its uptake that we could source, for 2022-23, which showed that 293 Scottish churches received a total that year of £2,073,047.67. We also demonstrated the excellent value that this state investment in these buildings returned, with evidence from the London-based National Churches Trust suggesting that for every £1 invested in a church £16 was returned to the local community.

 “Overall, the reach of the Scheme has been greater in England, with clear evidence that it has not reached comparable proportions of places of worship in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and, especially, Wales.”

With regards to Scotland, there are some notable flaws in the quantitative and qualitative data used in this evaluation. Most problematic is the authors’ claim that there are approximately 11,000 Scottish places of worship. As you can see in the attached table from the evaluation, this serious error was produced by reading a headline figure on the top page of the Places of Worship in Scotland website.

If the researchers had taken the briefest moment to delve deeper into the website they would have discovered that this figure includes every site in the country that has ever had some sort of recognised religious significance. These 11,000 locations have been patiently and diligently identified, catalogued and collated over the past few 

decades by our wonderful colleagues at the Scottish Church Heritage Research group. The SCHR database includes current places of worship along with thousands of holy wells, caves, place names, archaeological sites, ruined remains and hundreds of religious buildings that either no longer exist or have long-since been converted to other uses.

If the report authors had reached out to ourselves, we could have quickly shared with them our own ongoing research that logs the active places of worship in Scotland today, at least on paper. This currently stands at around 2884 places of worship, across all denominations and faiths, although many of these have already closed quietly or are awaiting the decision to go on the market. This is considerably fewer than the 11,000 claimed in the evaluation, a margin of error that adversely impacts some of the subsequent statistical conclusions that are drawn.

We must also look at the quality of the data itself. Some 10% of the 2178 respondents were from Scotland, which is a comparable size to that of Scotland’s population share of the British Isles. However, self-selecting surveys, where individuals answer questions designed to lead to a particular conclusion (which in this case is acknowledged as “Developing a Theory of Change (ToC) for the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme”), can be very problematic.

Broader substantive engagement with the organisations, charities, companies, presbyteries, diocese and other groups and individuals that work with Scottish places of worship on a day-to-day basis would have revealed to the researchers that the quantitative and qualitative data upon which they are basing their recommendations contained considerable flaws. Most notably, anyone with any genuine insights into Scotland’s places of worship over the past decade would have explained to them that the decline in take-up of the LPOWGS offer north of the Tweed has had more to do with the existential fear of church closure that has gripped congregations and denominations for much of this time. Many long-planned repairs and renovation projects have been put on indefinite hold while oft-heated and emotive debates were being had over which building were to be retained. These debates are still ongoing. This inevitably has impacts on grant applications and therefore it ought to have been reflected in any serious analysis of a national places of worship support scheme, alas, this is not the case here.

This ship has apparently now sailed and the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme is no more. Scottish MP Ian Murray, the UK Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Arts, explained to parliament last week that it will be replaced with a “Places of Worship Renewal Fund” which will provide £92m over four years for repair and conservation work in England. The Minister explained that as heritage is a devolved matter, the governments in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast must come up with their own schemes for churches.

Those of us that are heavily involved in supporting Scotland’s religious built heritage discussed the matter at length this week at the Scottish Places of Worship Forum, with members expressing their grave concerns about its closure. The loss of a guaranteed VAT recovery option for repairs to listed buildings will inevitably jeopardise many a project that was hoping to get underway soon, as hard-pressed congregations struggle to raise a further 20% for these works. Then there are the inevitable knock-on effects as work is cancelled or never even commissioned. Architects, surveyors, building contractors and specialist trades, such as slaters, stonemasons, blacksmiths, stained glass conservators and more, will be adversely impacted and threatened. Our traditional skilled workforce is already in dire straits, so this could be catastrophic for the sector.

So, what’s next? Well, of primary importance to anyone currently involved in an ongoing repair of a listed place of worship is that all claims must be submitted to the scheme by 11.59pm on the 31^st March 2026 if you hope to recoup the VAT on your project. Beyond this date we now need to see urgent action on this matter from the Scottish Parliament. . With £92m ring-fenced for the repair of places of worship in England by 2030, there ought to be a Barnett Formula derived equivalent allocation in Scotland. With Scottish churches currently closing at a rate of more than one per week and a Holyrood election just around the corner, you can expect to hear much more about this issue from us in the coming days!

We send our member churches monthly updates that include all available funding opportunities that we can identify. If you aren’t already a member, do join here.