First World War Centenary Cathedral Repairs Fund Evaluation

The first £20 million of the government's First World War Centenary Cathedral Repairs fund was announced by the Chancellor in the March 2014 Budget and set up with the following objectives:

• To carry out necessary repair works to the fabric of the listed Anglican and Catholic cathedral churches in England. The works should be necessary to keep the building wind-proof and weather-tight, safe and open to the public.

• To carry out repairs to prevent further deterioration of the fabric of the listed building.

• To ensure the listed buildings are in a good and safe state of repair in order to host events commemorating the First World War.

A further £20 million was announced in the March 2016 Budget with the same objectives.

The Fund is administered by the Cathedrals and Church Buildings Division (CCB, also known as ChurchCare) of the Archbishops' Council of the Church of England, on behalf of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

In total 146 grants have been awarded to 57 Anglican and Catholic Cathedrals. The Fund has supported 133 separate projects (NB some projects received more than one grant).

The grant applications were assessed by an Expert Panel against the grant objectives, using the following criteria:

• The urgency of the work.

• The contribution of the project to keeping the cathedral safe and open.

• The financial need of the cathedral.

• The impact the completion of this project would have on the cathedral's overall maintenance and repairs programme. This criterion was intended to see where these grants could have maximum impact.

The objectives of the evaluation are:

• To assess how far the grants have met the Fund's objectives and criteria (see above).

• To assess the wider economic impact of the funding, including impact of the fund on the state of the specialist building industry, e.g. numbers employed, training enabled (including apprenticeships) in traditional craft skills, how easy was it to obtain tenders, impact on local pricing of e.g. scaffolding. This assessment should differentiate between cathedrals with and without in-house works teams.

• To obtain information about the wider community benefits of the funding, e.g. in terms of enabling community activity such as knowledge/learning about the Cathedral and First World War, First World War commemoration and other activies. This will including the ability to reallocate funds towards community activities which would otherwise have been allocated towards repair works.

• To enable learning about what worked well and what worked less well about the grant processes, to inform future cathedral repair funding initiatives.

• To identify how far the grant programme has gone towards meeting the identified long-term maintenance and repair needs of Anglican and Catholic cathedrals in England.