Visit from Sir Gavin Williamson MP

We wrote to our local MP, Sir Gavin Williamson, to seek his support regarding the concerns we had about the new limit for claims being introduced to the Listed Places of Worship Grants Scheme in 2025/26. This scheme exists to support Listed places of worship, churches, mosques or Synagogues to recover the VAT on repairs and conservation work. The delivery phase of our own conservation programme includes a significant grant from this scheme so we wanted to share our concerns with our MP. Sir Gavin asked to visit the church and we had the pleasure of showing him around in February.

Sir Gavin was impressed by the history of the church and the work we have done to date to restore and improve the facilities. He also supported our desire to work more with our local community to make the church building more of a shared space and to encourage school visits, tours and improving access to the building and its heritage both physically through increased opening time and virtually through this website. He was kind enough to take our concerns to the Department for Culture Media and Sport and while they were unable to provide any assurance that the Listed Places of Worship Scheme might be amended, we felt at least we had raised the point and been listened to.

Thanks to Sir Gavin and his secretary Ryan Hillback for arranging the visit.