Sustainable Church Buildings Project 2023 – 2025
The Sustainable Church Buildings Project was a Cloudesley initiative run in partnership with the Islington Deanery and the Diocese of London.
The project began in July 2023 and ended in March 2025. It was open to the eligible Church of England churches within the Islington Deanery.
The project had three parts:
- Small Grants – all eligible churches could apply for a non-competitive grant of up to £10,000 for sustainability and net zero carbon measures
- Expert advice and support – Cloudesley commissioned Inspired Efficiency to provide bespoke advice and support to help churches participate in the project
- Large Grants – a small number of larger grants were available on a competitive basis
The project built on the 2017-18 Sustainable Church Buildings Project, and utilises the AECOM audit reports that were produced for all eligible churches as part of that Project.
Small Grants
All eligible churches in the Islington Deanery could apply for a grant of up to £10,000 which must be spent within 12 months of the award date. The grant can be used for projects which will help your church reduce its carbon footprint or improve sustainability. This could be outstanding recommendations in your AECOM audit report or other similarly evidenced measures (For example, you may have had another environmental audit carried out since 2017/18 and want to take forward recommendations from that or from your Quinquennial Inspection report). Small Grants were designed for smaller projects/works or for feasibility studies or project development for larger projects, so that a grant of £10,000 would cover all or the majority of the costs.
Before applying for a grant, churches needed to have first met with Inspired Efficiency to review their AECOM audit report – see ‘Expert advice and support’ below for more details about this. Once the review was carried out, they could then apply for a Small Grant at any time up to 31 March 2025. You can find more details about the Small Grants in the Small Grants Guidelines.
Once an application was submitted, assuming all the necessary information had been received, we aimed to notify churches of our decision in three weeks.
This was a non-competitive process so all eligible Islington churches were able to access one grant each if the proposed project/works fit the eligibility criteria. Churches could not apply for more than one Small Grant under this programme, although a grant could be for more than one item or project up to a total of £10,000.
Expert advice and support
Cloudesley commissioned Inspired Efficiency to help churches participate in this project. The support from Inspired Efficiency came in three main parts:
- A review of the church’s AECOM audit, including an online meeting with the church to review actions and progress and to provide updated advice. A short note was then provided to append to the AECOM original report, highlighting completed actions and updates
- Up to seven hours of bespoke project development support. This could be used flexibly depending on the needs of the church, but might include development of project proposals and specifications, or obtaining quotes and identifying contractors. Inspired Efficiency worked alongside the church team, including the church architect, aiming to leave embedded knowledge and confidence in decarbonisation measures
- Where recommended, an onsite decarbonisation audit was also carried out. This included a review of energy consumption, an onsite audit, advice on decarbonisation measures and more energy efficient behaviours and procedures, and an action plan with estimated costs and savings.
Cloudesley Trustees also agreed funding for Inspired Efficiency to undertake 3D scanning of the eligible churches, providing a 3D model of the building. Churches could use the 3D model to enable virtual tours of the church, allow for online measurement of any aspect of the building and generate scaled floor plans for use in project development and faculty applications.
For reference, a flowchart outlining the support available from Inspired Efficiency can be found below.
Large Grants
Through this project, Cloudesley is also providing a small number of Large Grants (over £10,000 and up to £65,000). The funding process for the Large Grants ran alongside the Spring 2024 main church funding round, with churches being able to apply to both funds at the same time. This means that successful churches could benefit from both a Large SCBP Grant and a Spring 2024 grant towards a single sustainability project.
Monitoring and learning
Cloudesley is keen to understand the impact of its funding and share learning from the grants agreed as part of this project. To help with this, churches which receive a Small Grant through this project will be asked to provide a brief report once the funded project/works have been completed.
For the Large Grants, specific monitoring requirements will be agreed depending on the nature of the funded project.
Contact
If you have questions about any aspect of the Sustainable Church Buildings Project and/or require any additional support with making an application, please contact your Grants Manager:
Grants Manager |
Contact details |
| Catherine Sorrell |
|
| Kevin Turner |
|
Inspired Efficiency Flowchart
