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:
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.
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.
Cloudesley commissioned Inspired Efficiency to help churches participate in this project. The support from Inspired Efficiency came in three main parts:
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.
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.
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.
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 |
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Kevin Turner |
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