House of Good - the social value of Church buildings
The Halo Effect - churches as ‘Key Places’ in our communities
Over the last year we’ve been working with the National Churches Trust on a bold and challenging study to put a social value figure on church buildings in the UK. Today the results are published and can be found here and on our case studies page.
To many the church is seen as a centuries old House of God, a place where an ageing population meets to celebrate their faith. Taken for granted and irrelevant in an increasingly secular society. The truth is very different.
Church buildings as a House of Good - a vibrant, efficient, responsive network of social value providing vital help to those in need. And Covid 19 has served to highlight this vital role.
Today, church buildings are home to drug and alcohol support, financial advice, youth clubs, after school care, credit unions. There are more food banks than McDonald’s in the UK and the vast majority are set up by, linked to or run by churches and their volunteers. They are the National Help Service and 89% of churches rapidly re-purposed their efforts to help the community through the Covid-19 pandemic.
For the first time, the National Churches Trust report quantifies the economic value of the help generated by and through church buildings. To help illustrate how the church building generates social value we use a ‘halo effect’ of layers of value radiating form the church (inspired by Andy Haldane’s work in 2014 to value volunteering).
The circles build out from the market value - cash generated, volunteer hours and what it would cost the state to replace the church help. But then we also look at the non-market value of the wellbeing and social value to those who attend church, those who volunteer and also the wider benefit to the hundreds of thousands of people the church helps.
As a pioneering study there will always be imperfections - mixing different sets of data and making assumptions was always going to be necessary. We have also used a promising new method to look at the social and wellbeing value (the WELLBY) in line with the costs that the NHS would expect to incur for the same benefits and published these alongside the alternative wellbeing valuation method. These WELLBY cost of production figures are four to six times less than the wellbeing valuation method we have used in the past for studies on football, volunteering, swimming and other interventions. As a result we are confident the values are realistic and conservative.
The full summary and technical reports can be found in our case studies section and key findings are listed below:
The total social value of church buildings in the UK calculated so far is at least £12.4 billion (roughly equal to the total NHS spending on mental health in 2018).
This figure could be as high as £62.8 billion (around half of all NHS spending in the UK) if the impacts are valued using alternative monetary wellbeing terms.
Urban and rural churches generate the same amount of social value per person.However, urban churches generate more social value as they are able to host and serve more people. This is especially true in deprived urban areas where they are also at greatest risk of closure.
Cost benefit analysis shows that for every £1 invested in church buildings there is a Social Return on Investment of £3.74 using the most conservative methods, which can go up to £18.10 when alternative wellbeing valuation methods are used. There is no question that church buildings provide a strong, positive return on every £1 invested.
While we expect and invite all the technical queries that come with work of this type; we all certainly need to re appraise our preception of the role that church buildings have in our communities. Churches are ‘key places’ with a vital role as a vibrant, responsive and cost effective ‘national help service’. They are literally the heart of where we live.
However, the funding to keep these buildings open and in good repair comes primarily from local and charitable endeavour, much of which is provided through the efforts of congregations themselves. There is no strategic funding for churches, no bailouts for these ‘key places’.
The result of reliance on community funding is that churches are at risk of closure in precisely those deprived communities who need them most. According to a recent study by the Church Buildings Council “Churches in the most deprived parishes in the country are far more likely to struggle than those in less deprived areas and even more likely to close”.
The findings of this report are incredibly relevant and timely to the objectives of policies to ‘level up’ society and to reduce inequality. The vital services the church provides are at risk in precisely those communities who need them most. It is an absurd situation.
The summary and full technical report can be downloaded from our case studies page on the button below.