To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have considered co-locating public services in under-used church buildings.

Before the debate proceeds, I remind the Committee that in the event of a vote in the Chamber, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes from the sound of the Division Bell and 10 minutes will be added to the time allotted to the debate.

My Lords, there are nearly 50,000 church buildings in England; 16,200 of them belong to the Church of England, and the rest are mostly owned by the Catholic Church, the free churches and other denominations. Many sit on prime sites at the centre of their communities, yet they are often large and underused. There is a growing trend to return church buildings to their original function not just as places of worship, but places of assembly, service and celebration for the whole of their community. This ancient tradition, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London reminds us in the report Churches and Faith Buildings: Realising the Potential, has in more recent times been overlaid by distaste for mixing sacred and secular, but this dichotomy is increasingly being challenged. This underused asset base is considerable and, because of shortness of time, I want to focus my words today on church buildings, not on properties owned by other faith communities. As socio-economic conditions get tough and public finances are inevitably reduced, we need to relook at this property portfolio.

I know from many years of experience working with churches across the country, today as a non-stipendiary minister in the United Reformed Church, that the users of these buildings can often be small elderly congregations who find it very difficult to maintain or use effectively the asset that history has bequeathed to them. As many noble Lords will know, the Bromley-by-Bow Centre, which I founded in East London, began in such unpromising circumstances. Twenty-six years ago, I arrived as the minister to be greeted by 12 elderly people, all over 70, in a 200-seater church, sitting where they had always sat. It looked as though the dead had been carried out and no one had noticed.

By applying more entrepreneurial business principles and developing partnerships with the business, public and voluntary sectors, today we own a three-acre site that is run by 177 staff. The centre manages over 125 different activities each week, and on site there is a polyclinic, which brings together not just the biomedical model of healthcare but a wider range of other public services through an integrated approach. Two thousand people each week pass through the site, and with our partners, the housing company Poplar HARCA and Leaside Regeneration Ltd, we are putting together a £1 billion regeneration programme on an area of land the same size as the Olympic park on the other side of the road. Today, this church-based project has demonstrated new ways of delivering public services that are breaking new ground and challenging the traditional silos of government whose old-fashioned, expensive, bureaucratic approaches have so often failed to engage effectively with local residents and raise their quality of life.

Three years ago, I was approached by the then general secretary of my small denomination, the United Reformed Church. The church was becoming increasingly concerned about the scale of the problems it was facing with the condition and efficient use of its 1,700 buildings. I was told that many of them were listed and were a drain on limited resources. It was a serious problem that called for a new solution. Three and a half years later, my colleagues and I have created a new property agency for the United Reformed Church, called One Church, 100 Uses, and here I must declare an interest as a director of the company. This community interest company, a social enterprise, is now actively involved in the redevelopment of more than 30 church sites across England. Working with the Church of Scotland, we find that it shares similar problems. Yet underneath the apparent difficulties, we are discovering opportunities. We have discovered the rich rewards that appear when local communities begin to provide services for themselves. Not only does it save money, it creates healthier, more responsible people and stimulates an enterprise economy, which in turn encourages social cohesion. That is not a bad win-win scenario.

The church is fundamental to this outcome. Indeed, it has always played a central role in the care and service of local communities. The idea of the servant church goes back 2,000 years. The successful recent amendments to the Equality Bill illustrate that there is still a stomach in the Christian churches for us to play this important role. In past times, the church was coming to this caring/provider agenda from a position of authority and power. Today, it comes to it from a position of weakness and vulnerability. Perhaps that in itself is an opportunity.

If the church stops hiding behind committees and archdeacons, and instead shows strong business-like leadership, it can play an important neutral role in bringing partners to the table and in opening up conversations with the health provider, the local authority, the school, the housing provider and the shop. We are doing that on a number of sites across the country.

The church, the local school and the health centre are often the only long-term stable players in a local community, as governments change and countless new policies pass our door. Successive new policies can often further fragment local partnerships in practice and can prevent positive action. But few Ministers stay around long enough to observe the practical consequences of all this activity.

Politicians on all sides have been talking the language of joined-up thinking for some time now, but often it is not happening where it is most needed. Building partnerships is a complicated business, especially given the contradictory and disconnected commissioning processes that are in place. The connections and partnerships that could bring these buildings to life, deepen community cohesion and use limited funds far more efficiently, are just not happening. I could illustrate this in Glasgow, Bradford, Oldham, Gainsborough and Poole in Dorset, but there is not time. Believe me, it is a serious issue.

After 60 years of the state promising and often failing to provide, let us encourage choice and diversity. Let us not assume that the public sector will deliver it all. It will not. In hard economic times people have to huddle together for warmth. In rural communities, the pub, church, post office and village hall are often not sustainable on their own, which is why there are now 12 post offices in Anglican church buildings and in one of our developments we are looking at a police base in the church.

Perhaps I may describe just one example of a working partnership on the ground where we hope to develop some of these themes; namely, Harmans Water, Bracknell. The community centre across the square from the church closed due to health and safety concerns. A small library next to the church is open only 16 hours a week. A new housing development brings some Section 106 funding and a whole new community. The church, which is home to both the United Reformed Church and Anglican congregations, already hosts a range of community services and has insufficient space. With the support of the local authority and Bracknell Forest Homes—the local housing association—our plan is to build a new centre for the community with a wide range of community facilities, services and a new library. There will still be a librarian for probably only 16 hours a week, but it is hoped that the library, which perhaps will be next to a new cafe, will be accessible for more hours with self-service and will be joined by many other information providers. The police want a help point and the local children’s centre, the primary school and the college need a kitchen where families can learn about healthy living, et cetera.

So what are the key messages I should like the Minister to take from this debate? First, the credit crunch has caused many large-scale regeneration projects to stall. I know that because I am involved in one of them. However, often smaller-scale local developments involving church buildings and the clusters of buildings around them are being missed. Developments such as this are less risky and can provide a real opportunity to lift the local quality of an area. But they can happen only if everyone huddles together and pools their budgets.

To grasp these kinds of local opportunities we require focused leadership in the public sector and the churches. These projects do not happen by chance. We also need practical politicians experienced in the workings of the world. Church-based developments can provide them with an opportunity to redefine the role of the politician as the practical person and the bringer of partners to the table. This is where our politics will be renewed; not here in Westminster.

New Labour says that it believes in community, but this Government have often produced lots of strategies, policies, committees and legislation rather than getting involved in the practical realities of a local neighbourhood. I see little evidence that any future Government have woken up to this opportunity either. Politicians need to be grounded in real projects; the micro and the macro are connected, as any business person knows. I seek to present to the Minister today an opportunity that can enable us to use limited public funds more efficiently, to bring life to underused assets and to create social cohesion and a spirit of enterprise in some of our most vulnerable communities.

Finally, I encourage the Minister to take a closer look at these local opportunities to use public money more effectively. I ask Her Majesty’s Opposition whether it is not developments such as this that provide a practical opportunity in communities to explore what statements about a post-bureaucratic world might actually mean in practice.

I thank the Minister for taking part in this debate and the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, for a helpful discussion of this subject, and I look forward to hearing what they both have to say.

My Lords, I venture into this field as someone who has been a Methodist superintendent minister for more years than I care to remember. I am still an active supernumerary minister on the local Methodist circuit, and I welcome the opportunity to think things through which the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, has given me this evening.

There are many, many answers to the question because buildings, areas and congregations differ a great deal. Many church buildings, as we have already heard, are already in community use in one way or another. Three years ago, I went to close one old Methodist chapel in the village of Glan Conwy and found 16 people there. They did not want it closed because on Monday it was the place for the playgroup, as it was on Thursday. The local choir met there on Tuesday, and Wednesday night was bingo night. I do not think that John Wesley would have approved, but we just have to accept that this all helped in the community.

Other things happen in our churches: arts classes, language centres, play schools, elderly citizens’ meeting places, youth clubs and police help points. I do not often look on the dark side—I may be known as a bit of an optimist—but I can see a dark side with which I cannot come to terms. We hear that there are many opportunities in town centres, but rural areas are different. Who wants a chapel that is in a field and literally miles from anywhere? There is no real opportunity to use such a chapel for a community or government purpose.

I know that English Heritage, and Cadw in Wales, are aware of the various situations and how the listing of buildings can create difficulties—we have already heard about some of them—in planning, in the change of use, in the sale of property, in maintenance costs and in costs to make over a building. The development of church buildings can sometimes be restricted because of listing regulations.

The local Methodist church in the Conwy Valley village of Penmachno was listed about three years before it was decided to close it. It had been a thriving church in a quarrying, rural area, but as the quarries had closed and farm labourers were few there was nothing else to do except close it. Yet it was a listed building and after all these years is still not adapted for any other use, because they are fighting planning and listing regulations—immense problems for purchasers who would want to make it into a home. In many rural areas, I honestly do not see either central or local government having any realistic alternative for the use of church buildings. Populations are few and widely scattered. They commute to work, if there is any and if they are of an age to work—after all, we have a very ageing population in our villages. The community that was not able to support a chapel is also the community that faces a lack of vision. I do not have a vision of what we could realistically use those buildings for.

We know about falling numbers at services. There are few to keep a local church or chapel going. Possibly, it is a denomination that is unable to provide pastoral care or ministerial oversight. In another chapel that I am thinking of, there is one officer left—and that officer is of a good age and is not able to take responsibility for that building. He will, possibly, open the church door once a month, but they cannot cope; even with ministerial oversight, there are not the people there to shoulder the burdens and responsibilities.

I do not know whether you have been phoned up at two or three o’clock in the morning to hear, “Ah, Mr Roberts, the slates have been blown off the roof of the chapel”. That would be because they have landed in somebody else’s back garden. What do you do? I must say that I did not go to attend to it in those dark hours. There is nobody there to take responsibility, but the tiny congregation sometimes does not want to close the chapel. Perhaps they were christened or married there; they have spent all of their lives there, and it will break their hearts but there is no alternative.

I would like to see churches of all denominations working together—and they are, much more than in the past—to solve some of those questions. It has happened; we know that some church buildings are used by two or three different denominations. Yet then, instead of that one individual having to face the burden, we need some outside advice. I do not know whether we could work together—it must be on an ecumenical basis—because they struggle with, “How can we afford to repair the roof? How can we even afford the insurance premium?”. I do not know whether some other churches are like my own Methodist church; some communities with a congregation of six have an insurance premium on their chapel of £1,200 a year. They cannot possibly meet that sort of demand, so I suggest that the Government could somehow lead on this. We want expert guidance, helping sometimes to even take the burden of the decision to close from the shoulders of the local congregation. The painful decisions can be shared, but someone other than me must look at whether there is a way to tackle insurance premiums.

A younger membership with more energy and vitality might be able to maintain buildings and have the vision to adapt demand to the 21st century. I know that it happens in some places. Only last week, I was in one local church converted from a warehouse where it was standing room only. That was wonderful, but the previous Sunday, a week yesterday, I gave the closing service in a little village chapel in a part of Llandudno called Penrhynside. When I became a minister there, many years ago, there were six places of worship. One by one, they have closed—I am going to try to do something about this—and the last service in the village was held a week yesterday. It was very sad, but the people keeping it going were all over 80 years of age, and there was a limit to what they were able to do. So there is a different pattern. People, not buildings, make churches. But if the building is in a state of disrepair or needs special attention, we have to meet that need. Of the six chapels in the little village, one has become the village hall. Three chapels have become houses. The one that I closed the other day has not yet decided what it will do—it will probably be put on the open market—and one has been demolished. You need only one village hall, not five or six. They cannot all be adapted. Perhaps local councils or the Welsh Assembly Government can give some leadership. But, in many instances, I do not think that there is any realistic proposal that could save our buildings.

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, for bringing this issue to our attention. It must be 35 years since, as a youngish curate in east London, I found myself in a post-war restored Victorian church that seated 1,100 people. On my first Sunday morning, I counted 48 people in the congregation and more than 1,000 empty seats. We spent the next five years working hard on completely rebuilding that church and redeveloping the site. Now, there is a multi-purpose centre with provision for sheltered accommodation for the elderly, a general practitioner facility, language teaching for Bengali women and counselling rooms, as well as a place of worship.

That set me out on a path which I have sought to follow in my ministry over the years since. In the 1980s, I found myself as the parish priest in Canvey Island. There was a transplanted east London population of 40,000 people, many of whom were young families detached from their extended family networks in London and often with very severe family pressures and difficulties. We adapted the church buildings, in partnership with Essex County Council social services department and the Children’s Society, into a family centre which provided all kinds of provision for needy, young families. That provision has endured for 25 years.

The issue which the noble Lord has brought to our attention is very close to our hearts. For most of its history, the Church of England has had a vision for its church buildings as the centres of community life. Medieval church buildings were designed to be places of education, social care and community cohesion. Part of our mission as churches is to work among and for the benefit of the whole local community, and not just for the benefit of those who attend. The two biggest assets which the churches bring to this task are our buildings and volunteers. As has been mentioned, the Church of England has 16,200 parish churches across the country. In many places, they are not only the oldest public space, but the only remaining public space once the shop, post office, school, pub and so on have disappeared.

The Church of England, for which I speak, is especially well placed to serve as a potential service delivery point as it has a presence in every community. Its unique legal status means that its churches provide a service to all who live within the parish—whether people want to get married or to use its facilities for funerals or in other ways. My colleague, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, in his opening presentation to the recent Church of England synod debate on the potential of church buildings, said:

“We are the custodians of a countrywide infrastructure which would take billions”—

of pounds—

“to replicate and which has huge potential at a time of financial stringency”.

There is much research available to show that churches, as well as other faith groups, have a special contribution to make. They are deeply rooted in community life, able to reach out to the most vulnerable groups and are well placed to provide high-quality local public services. In recent years, many surveys have been carried out—funded by regional development agencies, government offices and local authorities—to map the contribution of faith groups in their local communities.

One such survey has been done in my home city of Leicester and demonstrates that more than 400 different community groups, sponsored by the various faith communities in a highly ethnically diverse city, are reaching the most hard-to-reach communities across the city. The Church of England is already playing its part, and churches are increasingly becoming vital partners in building strong communities. Examples have come to the Cathedral and Church Buildings Division of the Church of England of the many varied and different ways that church buildings are being used by and for the community. They include churches as locations for major civic events; as locations for social and community activities, including support for the elderly, the homeless, asylum seekers and so on; and as places of education, attracting school visits, UK online centres, Sure Start centres, nurseries, adult education centres, classrooms, after-school clubs, libraries, heritage centres and conference centres. These are all examples of provision already in place. Post offices, doctors’ and dentists’ surgeries, health centres, gymnasia, community shops, police stations, cafes and farmers’ markets have already been mentioned.

In my own diocese of Leicester, the St Philip's Centre is at the forefront of resourcing the church and public and private sector organisations, including the police, teachers and health workers, in faith literacy, a vital skill in public service today. It is based in an inner-city church in a largely Muslim neighbourhood. In the Church of Christ the King in Beaumont Leys, a white outer estate, the church is used extensively by groups supporting large numbers of transient asylum seekers and other destitute people. Leicester Cathedral plays host to the Welcome Project, which assists asylum seekers, and is presently planning for a major new diocesan centre reaching out to those not in employment, education or training. All these activities are taking place in living churches that are still parish churches, part of the parochial church system and still first and foremost places of worship.

The 2005 parochial returns register found that 44 per cent of churches now have lavatories and 37 per cent have kitchen facilities. Four years on, the figures are likely to be considerably higher. Such amenities enable churches to host a wide range of community events. The Pastoral (Amendment) Measure 2006, which came into force in January 2007, allows the lease of part of a consecrated church building, provided the church continues primarily to be used as a place of worship. This enables longer-term occupancy by outside groups and allows them to meet additional funding conditions. This is a role that we want to encourage national, regional and local authorities and other bodies to recognise, and it is a role that we are encouraging our churches to welcome, for example, by encouraging parishes fully to engage with the development of their local community plan and dioceses to participate in local strategic partnerships, local area agreements and local action groups. There is an increasing number of area or regional Christian and multi-faith groupings, as well as individuals at diocesan level, already actively participating in LSPs and other local, community and voluntary sector networks and alliances. This is beginning to create new partnerships and give us increased access to a more level playing field in terms of access to existing and new areas of funding. This in turn has strengthened the church’s capacity to develop the use of its buildings for worship and mission to the wider community.

However, we cannot continue to sustain all this activity or reach the full potential of church buildings as community resources without increased support from various partners, which must include government at all levels. That is why this debate is so important. The 2004 report, Building Faith in our Future, set out to celebrate church buildings and the contribution they make to their local communities. It called upon government and the community and voluntary sector to work with us in partnership. The report sets out many ways in which those partnerships can be built.

In January this year, St Peter's Church, Peterchurch, in the diocese of Hereford completed a project to refurbish the interior of this grade 1 church. Obviously, it will not be possible for every church to be so adapted nor, due to location or other factors, will it be possible to find such important extended uses but, where they arise, it is vital that we pursue the possibilities. By using these buildings to their full potential, they can become a real resource for their local communities. They can build social capital, serve community building and be a vital resource to the people of England. They are precious to the whole community and an asset beyond price that deserves all our interest and investment.

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, for initiating this debate and raising a very interesting and important subject. It has certainly stimulated in me considerable thought. Prompted by the debate, I have looked at and learnt more about the organisation of which he is part—One Church, 100 Uses—and was taken with the excellent and innovative work it is doing and the many excellent projects which he did not have time to develop. In this debate, I would have been more interested to hear of some of the problems to which he alluded but also did not have time to expand on. Here, we need to address problems and find solutions rather than simply congratulate ourselves on a number of excellent projects, wonderful though that is.

I reread the 2008 report referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, entitled Churches and Faith Buildings: Realising the Potential. I hope that the Minister will be able to bring us more up to date on some of the government actions which were recommended in that government report. The report was primarily about enabling faith groups, and the third sector in general, to learn about and have better access to funding. It is a hugely important subject, which I do not diminish at all, but it was rather less full on how to get access to the levers of power, particularly at local level.

Here I declare my interest, not as one with diminishing congregations but as a London borough councillor for 36 years—I still am a London borough councillor. I have rather different experience from my noble friend Lord Roberts. In London, we do not have too many chapels in the middle of fields but we have an increasing number of underused church buildings of all denominations where there is very real potential. The noble Lord, Lord Mawson, referred to considerably underused property assets. They are more than property assets: I think we all recognise that churches are very much more than simply buildings and often are very historic buildings. They are, always have been and always should be the centre of a local community. The initiative to put churches at the centre of communities more than perhaps they have been in recent years is greatly to be welcomed.

We in local government know that there are bad times ahead and that, whoever wins the general election, we shall be facing a very severe financial time over the next few years, probably the like of which I have not known in my 36 years. There have been some good times and a few bad times, such as when Anthony Crosland told me, within a year of my being elected, that the party was over, and it has been like that ever since. We are in for some difficult times which will require all of us in local government to think outside the box and to be very much more innovative in our approach to how we provide services for our communities. It is of particular interest to me that we should be much more innovative in the way in which we engage with our communities. In a period of financial cutbacks it will be especially difficult but important to engage with the communities, otherwise the mismatch and the disengagement will be all the more severe.

One point that perhaps strays a little from buildings and is much more about the churches is how local government engages with faith groups and churches and vice versa. In my view, faith groups should always be represented effectively in local strategic partnerships—I think the Minister would agree that that is the case on good LSPs. I stress the word “effectively”; they should be there not simply because it is good to have them listed among the membership but because they can play an effective role as partners. Inevitably, there is always a mismatch between the statutory partners with all their resources, even in hard times, and any community or voluntary group that simply does not have that infrastructure readily available to it.

Nevertheless, a good partnership will work as a good partnership. That will inevitably lead to more innovative thinking, new and different ways of providing services for and with the local community, and to returning church buildings very much to the sort of use for which they were originally intended, as the noble Lord has said—not just in their important role as a centre of worship but in the equally important role as a centre of the community.

I have two particular interests in the way in which some of this might happen. I have the responsibility in my local authority for the public library service, which is a great interest of mine. Indeed, I ought to declare an interest as vice-chair of the All-Party Group on Libraries, Literacy and Information Management. At all times, but particularly at financial times, the library service, particularly branch libraries, come under enormous pressure. There is a great fear that they will be in the forefront of financial cuts, and sometimes it is right and appropriate that branch libraries should close simply because they are in the wrong place. I would prefer to say that they should be relocated rather than closed.

I wonder whether in some cases relocation to an underused church building could be very appropriate for a branch library. I do not have time to wax eloquent—if I could—on libraries, but they are very much more than just places for books and the use of the internet, important though those core businesses are. Several branch libraries in my own borough are self-service—the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, referred to self-service libraries—enabling them to stay open for much longer.

I shall give two brief examples. In the first couple of months of this year libraries in my borough have been issuing freedom passes in London to anyone over 60 who wishes to renew their freedom pass. My borough is one of the few that are using public central and branch libraries to do this, and the libraries have been packed with people who have not been to a library since they were children and who note that libraries have changed just a little in the past 50 or 60 years. Many of them are going on to use libraries. That may be an innovative use for some underused church buildings. At the other end of the age scale, we use our library every Friday evening for what would otherwise be called a youth centre. This Friday is live music and open mic night for young performers, which is rather different from the traditional image of the “shh” public library.

The other issue to which I want to allude is very much a London issue and on a rather larger scale. Over the next seven years, London education authorities will have to find an additional 50,000 primary school places. That is a huge problem. Normally we talk about a funding problem—the Minister may be pleased to know that I will not allude to that particularly—but this is also a space problem. In many schools, there is the physical problem of where to put additional classes, even if you can afford them. If you add to that my party’s aspiration for smaller class sizes, it is even more of an issue. It is clearly not possible or appropriate for many church buildings to accommodate primary school classes, but it must be possible for a number of church buildings to do so provided that the buildings are properly built and designed for use as a classroom and are properly equipped. Any problems can be overcome, and probably more cheaply, than by trying to build new classrooms.

Those are two brief examples. We know that we are in hard times and that local government will need to be a lot more creative and innovative in its thinking over the coming years, and I hope very much that it will start to work much more closely with the churches, particularly in respect of the huge underused property asset to which the noble Lord referred.

I was beginning to feel inadequate as this debate unfolded. The first two speakers were ministers and the third a Bishop, so it was of huge comfort when the noble Lord, Lord Tope, said that he was a councillor. I am not a minister and do not think that the Minister is a minister, as his training is as an accountant. So I make that the church three and the laymen three.

I thank and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, not only on introducing this debate, but for the excellent work that he has already done on co-location of public services and utilising underused churches. His portfolio is truly outstanding, and I hope that we can develop and expand his project across the UK. There are thought to be 46,500 churches, chapels and meeting houses in the United Kingdom, of which 37,000 are in England alone, so the scope for co-location of public services is enormous.

Many churches are used, if they are lucky, for a couple of days a week for various services, and others maybe once a week. The church in my village in Norfolk is used once a month; otherwise, it remains locked. Maybe there is a difference in rural areas, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Roberts. Examples of the successes that we have heard of this evening are all about urban churches; so there is probably a difference due to the size of the communities involved. It may be easier to do it in urban areas than in small rural parishes. But there is scope there too, no doubt.

There are many other more everyday co-uses for church buildings, such as cafes, cyber-cafes, shops and farmers’ markets; they can also be used for cultural activities, such as exhibitions, drama performances, lectures, rehearsals and concerts; or for community services such as mother and toddler groups, playgroups and drop-ins for youth groups or elderly people, to name but a few. Some churches may not like the idea of having a commercial activity under their roof, but there are many non-commercial activities to think about. At a time when our essential public buildings and services are being scaled down or closed altogether, we are fast losing these vital spaces and opportunities for our daily activities, or to just come together to meet and talk. Co-locating key public services on the same premises offers benefits to service users in terms of lower journey times to get to a service that they require, and to providers, in that they would benefit from reduced overhead costs, such as the duplication of rent and building maintenance.

Often churches are on large, central plots of land, which can be used and developed to provide vital community activities. For example, the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, has developed a garden centre on excess church land. Many churches support that idea, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester said. In 2004, the Church of England published a Green Paper on its ideas for facilitating such a development, and in March 2009 the Government outlined a blueprint to help churches and local authorities work closer together to deliver a greater range of community services. What progress has been made since then? Maybe this question would be better directed at the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, but can the Minister say of the 16,000 Church of England churches, how many have started offering public services and what measures have been taken to engage other denominations and faiths so that they can open up their places of worship to local communities? What is being done to ensure that church and public alike are properly informed and supported about these possibilities?

Sadly, we now live more and more in a secular society. The church used to be one of the hubs of the community, a vital component in community cohesion. The church today is continually looking for ways to engage with its communities. Surely this would be an excellent way to achieve that and one way to bring the church back to the centre of community life. This might ruffle the feathers of the right reverend Prelate but all too often, especially in the rural areas that I see, the church is rather distinct from the communities. That is sad.

The best if not the only way of achieving the required results is probably at a grass-roots level. At my church in Norfolk, for example, there would need to be discussions between the parish council, the parish priest and maybe the local school. As chairman of our parish, I have heard nothing of the Government’s plans to help churches and local authorities work together. Maybe I missed it. Have the Minister’s plans filtered down to parish levels and, if not, should he not ensure that this happens?

As for the church, the local vicar is in a difficult position. Presumably he would need to ask permission from his superiors for other approved activities to take place in his church. In the same vein, if the bishops think it would be a good idea, as I believe they do, and a good way of bringing communities together in the church and utilising the church facilities, should they not ensure that this policy filters down to parish-priest level? It may well do. I am looking now at the right reverend Prelate. What better way is there to get the church back into the centre of the community?

Some churches and cathedrals already provide venues for many other uses, as we have heard. Yet the percentage is too small. The portfolio of the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, is testament to the potential success of this programme. We on these Benches support any proposal aimed at developing communities and bringing people closer together. The co-location of public services in underused church buildings is a great idea if properly thought out and supported. I hope the Government will support it.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, for introducing this debate on public services and church buildings. As others have done, I acknowledge the work he has done at the Bromley by Bow Centre and the innovative projects in which he has been involved, some of which he outlined this evening. I also recognise the expertise that has been available to us in this short debate. I understand that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester goes back 25 years with Canvey Island.

The noble Lord, Lord Mawson, outlined some difficulties particularly with larger regeneration projects, with a slightly ambitious proposition that we should somehow redefine the role of politicians in all this. I accept that politicians should have a more practical engagement at local community level. The noble Lord said we should look closely at opportunities that might be going amiss. Perhaps we can find time outside this debate for a discussion of this, as I am interested in feeding that back to colleagues.

I begin by referring to an earlier debate on a similar theme. In October 2008, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford introduced a debate entitled Welfare: Churches and Faith Communities by asking Her Majesty’s Government,

“what future role they envisage for churches and faith communities in voluntary sector and welfare delivery partnerships”.

In his opening remarks he stated an important principle:

“this is not simply a pragmatic issue about how, in times of scarce resources, we cajole agencies such as the churches into filling the increasing number of gaps in the welfare state. Churches and voluntary agencies are not a backstop for the public sector”.—[Official Report, 9/10/08; col. 363.]

Let me put this another way. At the heart of every tradition of belief is an integrity that cannot be simply co-opted to serve the ends of the powers that be at any one time or place. If government, national or local, is to work in partnership with faith communities, respect for this integrity is a fundamental principle, but it would be unfortunate, to say the least, if this principle were misinterpreted to mean that there can be no common ground between the public sector and faiths. Of course there can.

All communities need resources if they are to be thriving, cohesive and sustainable. They need reliable public services, particularly during such times that we have been through recently, when economic conditions are less favourable. As the noble Lord, Lord Tope, said, this is the time to be innovative, particularly at local authority level. The days are gone when the public sector could deliver virtually all these services in a top-down manner. If services are to meet the needs of communities, communities themselves have to be engaged. Faith groups are deeply rooted in their local communities and are often better placed than public agencies to reach people who might otherwise be marginalised. This engagement is a great deal more than mere consultation; it is sometimes correctly referred to as co-production.

I began by referring to the important principle of respect for the integrity of faith communities. I now want to stress another principle at the heart of faith communities—the principle of service to others, to which the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, referred. This can be about working for a better quality of life in a local community or it can be about global issues of justice or the environment. It is on the basis of this principle that the public sector can build a working partnership with faith communities.

There is a straightforward conclusion to be drawn from all that I have said so far. We cannot afford to overlook the important community assets represented by churches and other faith buildings, and we certainly cannot afford to allow them to be underused. I think that the right reverend prelate referred to the fact that they are custodians of a significant infrastructure.

A key element of my department’s current partnership with faith communities is the shared desire to build strong and positive interfaith relations. We are currently taking forward the major programme of work and investment announced in Face to Face and Side by Side, published in July 2008. It aims to release the greatest public benefit from the resources of faith communities through partnership working, especially through partnerships between faith communities and the public sector. Face to Face and Side by Side recognises that buildings are among the most significant resources of faith communities. I quote from Section 2 of the framework on shared spaces for interaction and social action:

“With 54,000 places of worship in the United Kingdom, faith communities are essential providers of sacred and secular spaces for people to interact and pursue shared activities. These spaces are found in all parts of all our communities from large cities to small rural villages. They are used by local people for local events and activities”.

We have heard of a huge array of things that go on in faith buildings in our short debate this evening. They,

“often function as the primary resources and buildings for community spaces and essential meeting places”.

Much of what I want to say today simply expands on this quotation, drawing out in more detail its implications and setting out what is being done to tackle the challenges that lie behind it. There certainly are challenges to be faced if the full potential of the resource is to be realised. A key challenge is the relationship between faith communities and the wider third sector. The third sector itself can often face barriers when working in partnership because of inadequate understanding of its scope and diversity. The work of faith communities is no different, ranging for example from a neighbourhood-level lunch club once a week to nationwide support for people with problems such as homelessness and drug addiction. Without their stock of buildings across the country in every community, as well as dedicated volunteers, faith communities would not be in a position to deliver this impressive range of services.

The Government have continued to invest in the capacity of the third sector over recent years, especially through the programmes of the Office of the Third Sector, which are worth more than £515 million over the 2007 CSR year. It is vital that this investment reaches faith communities, who are, simply and straightforwardly, eligible for it; I must emphasise that to eliminate any doubt. This principle has underpinned an important recent paper on faith buildings. Churches and Faith Buildings: Realising the Potential, which has been referred to already, was published jointly last March by the Church of England and five government departments. It confirmed the position of faith groups as significant contributors to society, and outlined the different sources of funding and other resources which faith communities could draw on to ensure that the potential of faith buildings is realised.

One important source of funding that faith communities could apply to to support similar approaches to the use of their buildings is the DCLG’s Communitybuilders programme. That provides support for community anchors: organisations that operate locally, at the heart of their communities, and are able to respond holistically to local problems and challenges. Through the Communitybuilders programme we are investing £70 million to help anchor organisations work towards long-term financial stability, so that they can meet the needs of their communities for generations to come. Clearly, many faith buildings may be seen as community anchors.

However, central and local government funding for community-focused organisations will be increasingly strained in the current economic climate. For this reason, my department wishes to make it easier for all community groups to develop the resources and finance they need to make better use of their buildings for the good of their local communities. The DCLG recently launched its community enterprise strategic framework, outlining the department’s direction of travel in supporting community-focused organisations. Community enterprises represent a distinct and important part of the third sector. They operate not just as a not-for-profit deliverer of local services, investing any surplus back into their communities, but as focal points for local people to identify the unmet needs of their communities and to respond with help from their own income-generating activities.

Many faith buildings already host community enterprises—cafés, room hire and nurseries, for example—all of which have enhanced the community and provided important income for the building. We want to see that approach extended. Just this month, it was reported that a church in Carmarthenshire is looking to run its own tenpin bowling alley, would you believe. Not only will it be used to create important local jobs, but the profit that it makes will allow the church to undertake important community projects, such as developing a food bank and debt counselling.

Money cannot do everything; we also need to equip people by helping to change cultures and changing the way people think. Churches and faith communities have to learn how to work effectively with the public sector, and vice versa. This culture change cannot simply be decreed, either by the public sector or by faith communities. Like any relationship, it has to be worked at. We have consistently promoted that key message, not least in supporting the publication by the Church Urban Fund of Believing in Local Action alongside our Face to Face and Side by Side. Believing in Local Action uses practical case studies to demonstrate the benefits of partnership between local third-sector organisations and local faith groups. It shows consistently that local faith communities are better equipped to work in public partnerships, and therefore have better access to appropriate resources when they align themselves with wider third-sector networks.

As I have said, this is a two-way process. I want to affirm the efforts that faith communities are making to equip themselves, such as the Church of England’s Crossing the Threshold programme, which is aimed at helping dioceses and parishes to get the best from their buildings for wider community use. It began with a conference in the Hereford diocese last November, where one of my officials was the main speaker and a toolkit was launched, aimed at supporting parishes in beginning the process of developing their churches as a resource for the whole community. I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, will see that as one route into helping parishes to understand and engage in the process.

My officials are also currently planning a conference to take place next month, whose working title is “Faith and Social Action: Innovation and Expertise”. The conference will highlight examples of good practice and use workshops to explore some case studies in greater depth. I am pleased to say that two of the case studies deal explicitly with public service delivery by churches: the Springfield Centre in Birmingham and St Peter’s, Peterchurch, in the diocese of Hereford. Incidentally, St Peter’s is a listed building and English Heritage is very much involved in encouraging and helping in these situations.

The intention is to produce a conference report that will be a resource both for faith communities and for the public sector, supporting them to co-operate effectively in delivering the services that local communities need and deserve. One of the main speakers will tackle directly the collocation of services, such as village shops and post offices, in churches, especially in rural areas, and will show how his own organisation, the Plunkett Foundation, is offering resources to churches wishing to go down this social enterprise road.

I shall try to deal with one or two of the points raised, but I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I do not deal with them all. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, talked about buildings, areas and congregations differing. We very much recognise that, which is why local engagement is important. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tope, that having faith communities as an effective part of the local strategic plan is entirely appropriate and should be encouraged. One can understand the dilemmas when places of worship could be closed. As the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, said, people have memories and do not want churches to close. The right reverend Prelate talked about all the uses that are being made of living churches; we do not have to empty a church for this to happen.

The right reverend Prelate talked about the vision of the Church of England to be at the heart of the community—the whole of the community. That is supremely important. He referred to the 16,200 churches, but I am afraid that I do not have any data for the noble Earl on how many of those are engaged in some form of community use. The idea of public library services being collocated seems an interesting example. Then there is the issue of urban areas that are running out of spaces for new school places. There are some interesting concepts there. It is part of the theme of having an innovative approach, which will certainly be the watchword for the local government.

The LGA completed a survey of local authorities’ engagement with faith groups in 2008 to inform, update and resource local authorities to work with faith and interfaith groups in their area. It is hoped that the next step towards producing this updated resource will be taken in the near future. Both the LGA and the Improvement and Development Agency are actively engaged in this. There was the interesting example from the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, of the church that is used just once a month. His concern about the rural community was not so much that the building was isolated in a field but that the church was isolated from his community. He was talking on the same theme of the benefits of collocating services.

I hope I have demonstrated that the Government are actively supporting the collocation of public services in churches and other faith buildings, both in principle and in practice. The Government have no magic wand that will transform things overnight. Indeed, I have argued that a top-down approach would be counterproductive. We are not complacent; we acknowledge that more can be done. We will continue to work with faith communities in the spirit of partnership, which as well as being about mutual support is equally about mutual challenge. In doing so, we must keep before us the aim of partnership, which is not about scoring points off one another but about improving outcomes for local communities.