PRIORITY  4: To  enable  the  launch  of  a  Church  Buildings  Management Partnership which will provide support to our smallest churches in managing their buildings; 

As a diocese, we are continuing to take a lead regionally and nationally, on the development of the ‘Church Buildings Management Partnership’ concept, to make it implementable.  We have registered a CIO, which will be able to take a minor legal interest in each building in the scheme in order to be in a position to buy insurance and commission maintenance work.  We are beginning to work with a small number of parishes on a pilot basis to work out the details that will make this scheme practical and attractive, before rolling it out more widely.  We await input from the national church on negotiation with the major insurance companies which will be an important part of the funding of the project.  The national church have committed to £10k of funding per diocese to help establish this scheme and we are hopeful that we will find ways of working with neighbouring diocese to realise benefits of scale with them.