image for illustration: Fiona Newton
The new Places of Worship Forum (POWF) Newsletter includes Audrey Dunn, Churches Advisor at COSS (Community Ownership Support Services) introducing their New Futures Programme – Former places of Worship in Scotland a new initiative dedicated to supporting churches into community ownership.
POWF writes:
… It is now well known that the Church of Scotland (CoS) in particular, is rationalising its estate at pace and our research shows that as many as 800 church assets across Scotland (across all denominations) are potentially up for sale in the next few years. COSS (Community Ownership Support Services) has been supporting groups over the years with their ambitions to bring churches and glebe land into community ownership but to support this unprecedented demand we have now launched a new dedicated support service.
I am the Churches Advisor covering the North half of Scotland and my colleague Claire Martin, covers the Southern half. A third advisor will also be coming on board shortly as our research shows that demand is due to further increase next year. This research was started by the DTAS (Development Trusts Association Scotland) Research and Insights team and further developed by our new Programme Support Officer, Harry Whitmore. Harry is part of our churches team and has been leading on developing an open-source database detailing the status of all Church of Scotland assets from local presbytery plans and other publicly available material on other denominations into one handy searchable document that we can continue to update. This will provide communities and stakeholders with vital information to help them plan support and community action.
As advisors we will provide dedicated support along with training and guidance to equip communities to make informed decisions on the future of their local church assets, providing the tools for community ownership where appropriate and ensuring communities across Scotland have the support they need. We will also be raising awareness, visiting targeted areas and highlighting to communities the assets that may be being disposed of the support available to them. So, in summary, our service will, over the next three years provide-
- early-stage guidance and advice to communities including 1-2-1 Advisor support
- start up support, mentoring and sharing good practice with groups
- peer-to-peer networking and learning exchanges
- help building capacity in community ownership through training workshops, guidance and resources
- dedicated web pages with digital resources (still to be developed) as well as signposting to other support bodies
- a ‘Churches SOS’ Crisis Support Service for groups that need to access support quickly to access their options
- microgrants to groups to set up to hold early-stage community consultation events, print leaflets etc.
- work with a range of partners and stakeholders to ensure holistic package of support.
We are also looking forward to continuing our work with BEFS, by co-developing and delivering workshop sessions and exploring how best we can support local authority officers in this fast-paced environment. As the programme develops, we will be sharing information and findings with partners across the UK and look forward to working with a variety of stakeholders including those involved in the Places of Worship forum. It’s early days and our webpages are still under construction, but we have been busy! Since 2024 the COSS team have been working with over 50 active community groups who are exploring the options available to them and we have launched our first series of online workshops. The topics so far cover place planning and community engagement delivered in partnership with Coalfields Regeneration Trust and an information session on Community Right to Buy delivered by Scottish Government. The past few months we have delivered workshops such as ‘Churches into Community Ownership – First steps’, ‘Finance and Fundraising’, and ‘Business Planning’.
This three-year project is possible thanks to funding by the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) and Historic Environment Scotland (HES) and Development Trust Association Scotland (DTAS). Please do share our contact details amongst your network and we very much look forward to hearing from new groups considering taking a former place of worship into community ownership.
