Harlow Consulting has published a questionnaire aimed at those responsible for looking after listed places of worship. The user survey is being conducted on behalf of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport as part of an evaluation of the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme.
Harlow Consulting explains:
“The questionnaire will ask you some basic information about your place of worship, its finances and its condition, then about whether your place of worship has benefited from the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme. It may make it easier to complete the questionnaire if you have relevant information available. For example, we will ask for an approximate idea of recent expenditure on your building and about your experience (if applicable) of the scheme.
If you have this information to hand, we would expect it to take around 15-20 minutes to complete all the questions.
Please note that, as far as possible, we will only ask you questions that we think are relevant to you. If your place of worship has benefited from the scheme, we will ask more about how and what impacts it has had. If your place of worship hasn’t benefited, we’d like to understand more about why it hasn’t. For this reason, question numbers may not follow in direct sequence. In all cases, we will ask around twenty-five questions, of which the majority are short answer, multi-choice or rating-scale questions. We have also included some free-text responses so that you can tell us any additional things you think we should know about the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme.
You will be able to ‘save’ and return to the survey, should you need to do so. The survey will be open for completion until the end of 25 March, so please ensure you submit your response by then.
If you have any questions about this research, please contact Jose Seisdedos at DCMS jose.seisdedos@dcms.gov.uk(opens in new window) or Dr James Legard at Harlow Consulting, jlegard@harlowconsulting.co.uk(opens in new window).”
The closing date for responses is Tuesday 25 March.
This grant enabled us to accept the other grants for the completion of building repairs; without it we would not have been able to pay the deficit and would have had to decline the other grants as they were dependent on us paying the VAT. This grant has meant that our building is now safe to use and can reopen. It has been vital to our church’s future.
I am a retired Chartered Surveyor (FRICS) and have been the fabric officer for nearly 40 years. Our building dates back 900 years. We currently have a major repair project underway on the church tower. The top half is of timber frame (1494) with board cladding. The frame has just been exposed and significant difficult repairs are required.
The current estimated costs are £193,000 excl VAT. An additional £38,000 could have put this out of reach, before taking into account the risk of overrun on costs.
To gather the money required was very hard work and beyond many. We are unsure at the moment on the amount we will be caught by the current changes.