Statements of Significance and Need
The best way to start a project is to develop Statements of Significance and Need. These documents set out what is special about your church building, what is needed in your community, and what the options are for meeting these needs. They are a requirement for all Faculty applications.
What is significance?
What is special or important about something.
What is need?
Evidence of something required for people, worship and/or mission.
Spending time on understanding significance and need first will help enormously with Faculty and funding applications. |
The following video briefly explains what Statements are and why they are needed:
Statement of Significance
Your Statement of Significance should outline the development of the church, telling the story from its origins to today. There is a template provided when you make an application using the Online Faculty System, but you also have the option to write your own document and upload it separately.
Imagine the person reading has never seen your church! We would encourage you to be generous with the information provided, as it all helps to provide context.
Add lots of photographs, which are invaluable in helping people to understand the building and the impact of any proposals. It is worth seeing if there are any local history groups who could help with writing your Statement, or if you are applying for a large grant, you could build in the cost of paying a consultant to write it.
The Statement of Significance should cover the:
- Setting of the church.
- Social history.
- Exterior and interior of the building.
- Contents.
It should provide an objective assessment of the significance of the parts of the building that may be affected by your proposal. As an example, for an application that involves removing pews, you would be expected to provide information on the provenance of the pews and how they have been altered over time. A useful starting point for your Statement is the listing description provided by Historic England (but don’t rely solely on this). The Devon Archives (‘record office’) has records of historic Faculties, local history books, local newspaper articles, and parish newspaper cuttings. Victorian restorations of churches were often detailed in the local press, these articles can help with dating various fixtures and fittings including pews. A guide to sources for the history of churches in the Diocese of Exeter can be accessed here.
In assessing significance, you could use the following terminology:
Finally, your Statement will need to provide an objective assessment of the impact of your proposal on significance. Impacts can be classed as low, moderate or high.
You don’t need to write an entirely new Statement of Significance for every Faculty application – you only need to update content (as necessary) and provide an assessment of your new proposal on significance.
The following video provides a guide to writing a Statement of Significance:
Statement of Need
Your Statement of Need should set out what you want to do and why. It is a useful tool to the parish in focusing your vision and agreeing what you want to achieve. Consultation with the wider (non-church attending) community can be valuable here in demonstrating how the church could be opened up to more people. If you are applying for grant funding for your project, funding bodies will want to see evidence of community consultation and engagement.
The Statement should cover:
- The current use of the building.
- What is needed.
- What evidence there is for the need.
- What options have been considered.
Your Statement should be evidence based, including facts on parish population, the electoral roll, numbers of people attending services and their age profile, whether the church is open on a daily basis, what sorts of activities take place and who attends these. Parish level census and deprivation data is available online here.
For applications involving serveries and/or WCs, it is important to carry out options appraisals to evaluate the various possible locations and why these are, or are not, suitable (this should relate to the impact the options will have on significance). Options appraisals should also be provided for applications involving heating.
There is a template provided when you make an application using the Online Faculty System, but you also have the option to write your own document and upload it separately.
The following video provides a guide to writing a Statement of Need:
The Church Buildings Council has some very helpful guidance on writing Statements, available here. The Church Buildings Office are always happy to provide feedback on draft Statements.
Once you have drafts of your Statements of Significance and Need, you can work with your architect to develop a proposal that finds the best balance between meeting need and safeguarding what is special about your church building.
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