St Monica's RC Church, Bootle, Merseyside.
Churches
There is no dispute about the importance of churches in shaping the nation’s heritage: they account for 45% of all listed buildings in England. At the same time, they are often high maintenance structures, with ageing and diminishing congregations upon whose shoulders the burden of maintenance and repair primarily rests. While grants have made an enormous difference, the need for support is as great as ever.
AHP has been working with English Heritage and several Roman Catholic dioceses on Taking Stock, a programme which looks at all the parish churches within a diocese and assesses both their significance and their sensitivity to change. Taking Stock comes against a backdrop of threatened church closures in many areas, and is designed to inform decisions about future use and adaptation. As such, the programme is proving to be an invaluable forward planning tool for the Roman Catholic dioceses taking part. Surveys have been completed for the dioceses of Lancaster and Portsmouth, and are currently in progress in the Archdiocese of Liverpool and the dioceses of Leeds and Middlesbrough.