Our grants

We want to help

Wondering how you’ll foot the bill for the roof repairs this year? We know how hard it is to maintain a church when funds are tight. It can be a challenge to keep the doors open, let alone serve your community.

At the National Churches Trust, we’re here for you.

Our grants provide essential funding to repair, restore, and improve church buildings. We offer bespoke training and advice. All so you can focus on what matters most: ensuring your church doors remain open and your building can continue as a vibrant place of worship at the heart of your community for years to come. 

Help – which grant do I choose for my project?

If you need urgent and structural repairs to your church building

This includes reroofing, tower or spire, and stone and masonry repairs where the work is more than £80,000 including VAT and fees. Please see our Large Grants programme.

If you want to install toilets or a kitchen in your church, or improve existing facilities

This would involve alterations to your church building to install or improve kitchen and accessible toilet facilities. This could be as an extension to your church, and it also includes church halls that are connected to the church building, but it cannot be a separate building from your church, unless you have been advised by Historic England, Cadw, Historic Environment Scotland or the Department for Communities – that a separate structure is the preferred solution. The works must cost more than £30,000, including VAT and fees. Please see our Large Grants programme.

If you need help to develop a building project at your church

We can fund projects and investigative works that are centred around an existing church building, and which helps to develop a more informed, better quality proposal to a point where you can approach major grant funders. This could be researching repair issues through an in-depth structural report or identifying different approaches to a solution through feasibility or options appraisals. The work would ultimately be eligible for one of our grant schemes once it was developed further. Please see our Medium Grants Programme.  

If you need fabric repairs to your church building

These would be works to the fabric of the building that are urgent and essential. But where the works cost no more than £80,000, including VAT and fees.  This includes roof work or stone repairs. Please see our Medium Grants Programme.  

What we do not fund (please also check the guidance note for the particular scheme):

• Church based activities eg social outreach services, funding for choirs etc
• Conservation or changes to contents eg artworks, bells, glass, clocks, monuments, pews etc
• Work in churchyards/boundary walls eg tree management, conservation of monuments etc
• Work to a building separate from the main church eg a church hall that is not connected to the main church building
• Works purely for heating, lighting and reseating
• The construction of a new church building or purchase of an existing church building
• Buildings that are no longer in use for regular public worship
• Buildings that are less than 30 years old
• Buildings that were not originally built as a place of worship