Many churches may crumble in a decade

London: Dozens of London's historic churches will crumble in the next 10 years if the public does not step in to save them, English Heritage has warned.

The organisation, which last year launched a campaign to prevent the decay of the hundreds of religious buildings across the country, estimated that about £925 million (Dh6.66 billion) would be needed to renovate and repair the 14,500 at-risk churches in England.

English Heritage said that in London there are 700 listed places of worship where £45 million is needed to be spent over the next five years.

But chief executive Simon Thurley said yesterday the money would be impossible to find in the next decade and an alternative was needed to stop a potentially "devastating" outcome. He said the only way to rescue buildings from neglect was for local communities to adopt them. "The public has a huge part to play in caring for the buildings if they want them saved," he said. "They need to step in and make use of the church and not let it fall into a state of disrepair. Survey after survey shows that the vast majority of us, not just churchgoers, care deeply about our historic places of worship.

"But congregations are decreasing in size, repair costs are rising and the amount of money English Heritage can offer is falling. My message to the public is simple - if you do not use it, you lose it."

A community campaign led by stars including Dame Diana Rigg, John Standing and Edward Fox has been launched to help save one of Sir Christopher Wren's London's churches. St James's in Piccadilly is at risk of demolition and needs £3.5 million of work to restore it to its former glory.

Good example

Thurley said it was a good example of the public rallying round to save a building. English Heritage has set out a series of proposals to help solve the problem, but estimated that the cost of repairing all of England's listed churches would exceed the amount raised by congregations by about £118 million a year.

Thurley said: "Unfortunately it seems that for every church we save, there will be one we lose. We realised that we need virtually £1 billion to save them and jumble sales organised by the churches are never going to cut it. "We have made moves to help a huge number of buildings on the brink of demolition but we still predict that many will be in a terrible state in the next 10 years."