Two decisions from the Government means those in charge of keeping these Christian icons open are facing an almost insurmountable struggle
By Peter Stanford
THE TELEGRAPH
26 January 2025
Peterborough’s cathedral has launched an emergency appeal to allow it to pay its bills Credit: Dave Porter
The prospect of Peterborough Cathedral running out of money and being forced to close its doors to visitors at the end of March, just as Easter beckons, has made national headlines. This 12th-century Norman masterpiece, burial place of Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife, has launched an emergency appeal to raise £300,000 in just two months to stave off financial ruin as rising costs and depleted reserves mean it faces being unable to pay its bills. But is it a one-off failure, or are England’s other 42 Anglican cathedrals also facing a similar crisis?
Official Church of England statistics suggest the latter: three-quarters anticipate running a deficit when their 2024 accounts are completed, with just eight predicting a surplus. “All cathedrals are facing considerable financial challenges at the moment,” confirms the Very Revd Dr Simon Jones, Dean of Lincoln Cathedral.
Like Peterborough, he says, Lincoln, for all its size and splendour (its earliest parts dating back to the 11th century) is not on the usual tourist routes. It therefore cannot generate the same income as the other nine cathedrals that, like it, have decided they have to charge visitors an entrance fee (though not worshippers).
“It currently costs us around £25,000 a day to keep the cathedral open,” Jones reports. “At the end of our current financial year in March we will have a deficit of £500,000, and are projecting that there will be deficits in the next three years of £1.5 million, £1.4 million and £1.2 million”.
And all that is before they have factored in the impact of two recent decisions by the new Labour government. “With around 100 staff – not all full-time – the increase in employers’ National Insurance Contributions [NICs] is going to have a significant impact, especially on our efforts to build up our works department. It shrank during the pandemic and we don’t want to be overwhelmed by the task of maintaining one of the greatest buildings in Europe”.
The challenge of finding the money for the uplift in employers’ NIC was also highlighted by Peterborough’s Dean, the Very Revd Chris Dalliston, when he made his appeal for funds. Even with a smaller workforce than Lincoln – the equivalent of 25 equivalent full-time workers – he warned, “we’re facing increases in the living wage and national insurance contributions. We want to be a responsible employer but these things impact our bottom line”.
While Chancellor Rachel Reeves may not have considered the future of England’s cathedrals when she introduced the controversial changes in her budget in October, in their case she might just have imposed the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The second potentially fatal decision came this week when the Heritage Minister, Sir Chris Bryant, a former CofE vicar, announced in the Commons that the Listed Places of Worship scheme, which has allowed cathedrals and historic churches to claim back the VAT of every repair bill over £1,000, was being cut from £29 million last year to £23 million, with a new cap of £25,000 per place of worship.
Chris Bryant spent five years working as an ordained minister.
“It is good news that it will continue for another year because there had been a threat to end it altogether,” reflects Lincoln’s Dean, “but when you spend as much on repairs and restoration as we are doing, the cap will just add to the pressure on our budget, while the continuing uncertainty about whether the scheme will last more than one year makes any sort of planning much harder.”
It is deans who are responsible for the running of cathedrals, the ecclesiastical equivalent of chief executive officers in the secular world. And at the moment they are the ones daily shouldering the burden of keeping open these remarkable buildings – the vast majority Grade I-listed and several UNESCO World Heritage sites.
It is made harder because the number of those attending Anglican services in England remains below the figure pre-Covid in 2019. Fewer worshippers means less money in the plate. While visitor numbers to our cathedrals are climbing, again they have yet to match the 2017 annual figure of 9.38 million.
“As I look out of the window of my study,” says the Very Revd Dr Edward Dowler, Dean of Chichester Cathedral, which celebrates its 950th anniversary this year, “I can see a building that is not going anywhere. But at present we have £3 million going out and only £2.3 million coming in, and with the blow of new NIC charges we are going to have to find that money somewhere.”
Chichester Cathedral was consecrated in 1108.
Like Peterborough, his cathedral has little by way of reserves. To keep afloat it has been dipping in each year to legacies that are held in a separate fund, but that, he accepts, is not a reliable long-term solution.
“What you get into is something that I don’t want to do, which is charge for entry. At the end of the day, this is a church and I hate the idea that people will have to pay to come in, but I know that other cathedrals already see it as a necessity if they are to keep open.”
Chichester, he accepts, has some advantages over Peterborough in terms of location. “Tourists have the perception that there aren’t many other reasons to go to Peterborough [than seeing the cathedral]. At the other end of the spectrum are places like Winchester and Salisbury where the cathedral can be taken in as part of a bigger tour of their surrounding areas. We are somewhere in the middle. There are other attractions in Chichester.”
Very Revd Dr Edward Dowler says Chichester Cathedral has a shortfall of £700,000
As well as National Insurance, the cost of utilities shooting up alarmingly is still crippling the books. “Our gas-fired heating may not make the place very warm but it is expensive to keep on. The Church of England has an aspiration to get to net zero by 2030 and there are various plans like air-source heat pumps, but I can’t see how we are going to get there with all the different priorities we are balancing in our day-to-day mission as a cathedral. But everything has a financial angle.”
Over in Somerset, at Wells Cathedral, is Nerys Watts, who has the title Chief Operating Officer and works under the dean, the Very Revd Toby Wright. Each year she has to find £2.7 million to run the building, famous for its 13th-century West Front, the Gothic “scissor arches” in its nave and the splendid stained glass of its Jesse Window. “Being part of the national heritage,” explains Watts, “costs a lot of money”.
That is why it has recently started charging tourists £14 each to come in, which along with the shop and café, raises around £1 million a year. Add to that around £100,000 in offerings from those attending services, and it still leaves a hole of £1.6 million. “We have to be creative,” she says, so as well as the usual choral and classical concerts, Wells has recently allowed the building to be used for a silent disco (where attendees hear the music through headphones).
Wells Cathedral costs £2.7 million a year to run
The Church Commissioners manage the £10.4 billion investments held by the Church of England. Some of that, though, was earmarked last spring for a £100m financial downpayment on what the Church hopes will grow into a £1 billion fund to address its legacy of benefitting from the slave trade.
At present the contribution by the Commissioners to the running costs of the nation’s Anglican cathedrals in modest by comparison. They pay the clerical stipends (or salaries) for the Dean and two Canons. “It is quite a small amount in the bigger picture,” acknowledges Lincoln’s Rev Jones.
There are, he points out, specific small pots of money also available from the Commissioners on application to cover individual areas of a cathedral’s life, but he would like to see the national Church adopt “a different funding model that shows it understands the reality that we are facing”.
To that end there is an ongoing review by the Church Commissioners on cathedral funding about which he pronounces himself “hopeful”. But regardless of its outcome, he also wants the government to play a bigger role in the future in the maintenance of these national landmarks.
At present it provides no regular funding to cathedrals. “How things stand now is unsustainable. In France, for instance, the government stepped in and paid for the rebuilding of Notre Dame.”
Lincoln is the only one of the 42 English cathedrals currently on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register. Grants are available through the Heritage Lottery, but competition is fierce. The recent repair of its West Front, which can be seen from miles outside the city, received £12.4 million from the fund towards the final cost of £16.2 million, and included a new visitor centre. Yet current conservation projects include £1.5 million on the Chapter House and £500,000 on the Wren Library.
You don’t need to be an accountant to realise the sums don’t add up and that the problems in Peterborough are a siren warning of trouble ahead. “We are but custodians of these spiritual and historic power houses,” says Jo Kelly-Moore, Dean of St Albans Cathedral and chair of the umbrella body the Association of English Cathedrals. “If our cathedrals fall, this will have a huge impact on our nation’s heritage.”
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