1.  The four bodies submitting this memorandum represent nearly 1,000 independent churches throughout the United Kingdom. We welcome the publication of the Bill and are pleased to see that many of the concerns we have raised with the Home Office and Charity Commission in the consultation process have been recognised In general we are pleased with the proposals contained within the Bill but there are two areas of concern which remain.

  2.  In preparing the memorandum, however, we have addressed the two points we wish to make from the viewpoint of not just those small churches within our own groups but the very many more totally independent churches and chapels to be found throughout the British Isles who have no connection with any denomination or other church grouping. They are in the main, probably, unaware of the publication of the Bill and also of such a size that they might feel any comments they might wish to make on their own would receive little attention.

  3.  We cannot quantify the number of such small village churches affected but no one who travels throughout the country can have failed to notice the very many small churches and those who live in the country will recognise that many of these perform a very valuable service by being available to the village community groups for meetings, community events and the like. These churches tend to be run by a small group of aged persons whose life revolves around the church and its position within the village.

  4.  Registration Limit. The proposals for the registration of all charities sets a value level of £5,000 total income in a year below which a charity need not register (Clause 7 Section 3A). This is a welcome increase over the previous level of £1,000 but we still believe the limit to be too low. The review carried out by the Strategy Unit "Private Action, Public Benefit" recommended that the limit be increased to £10,000. Whilst many of the very small churches will have an income of below £5,000 there are other who will exceed this figure and yet, when faced with the need to register (if the present proposals are passed into the statute) will cause those running the church to conclude that they can no longer accept the onerous responsibilities of trusteeship and registration and force the church to close. We would urge the Committee to consider increasing the proposed limit so as to avoid such an adverse reaction to a Bill designed to bring a degree of regulation to charities yet not to force closure on those very valuable but small charities such as those outlined.

  5.  Expenditure of Capital. Clause 33 introduces new powers and limits for the expenditure of capital. We welcome this but regrettably the drafting does not appear to us to deal with what has become an increasingly unrealistic limitation on charities. We refer to the situation which applies to Permanent Endowment (PE). Current rules applied by the Charity Commission only permit PE to be expended where it is on new land and buildings and not merely new buildings. For many churches the result of this restriction is that money is held which cannot be spent even though the church faces, for instance, the need to build new disabled toilet facilities to meet Disability Discrimination Act obligations, because the expenditure is on new buildings on existing land. This cannot be a rational approach to the problem and we believe the drafting of the Bi11 should permit PE to be expended on new land or buildings. It may be that the ability to commit such expenditure should be made subject to the approval of the Charity Commission to avoid frivolous projects proceeding and this would be acceptable.

  6.  We would wish to express our thanks to the Committee for the ability to make this submission and trust that it will be received in the positive spirit in which it is made.

June 2004