|
We wish to provide good building stewardship, and want to know how we can calculate the amount of money that should be set aside each year for repairs and maintenance. What is the best way to do this?
AS I pointed out at my PCC recently, now that we have a new heating system it is time to save up for the new boiler in about 15 years’ time.
Every element of your building has an expected lifespan, and your first task is to identify what that is. I start with squared paper, or an Excel spreadsheet, and I usually consider a 50-year life cycle. In the left-hand column, list all the elements of your building that need regular maintenance, or may need repair. Here is a start:
Maintenance: gutters, drains, tree-pollarding, fire equipment, alarms, heating and electrical systems, lift. In the columns across, enter the appropriate average annual figure for each item in each year. Tree-pollarding, for example, may be five-yearly; so enter the usual total cost each five years.
Renewal: church redecoration (nave every 20 years, lavatories every three years); new lavatories (every five years); refitted kitchen (every seven years); new boiler (every 15 years); rewiring (every 25 years). Enter the full cost, each time it will occur, in the appropriate column.
Repairs: pitched roofs, flat roofs, walls, gutters, down-pipes, drains, stonework, windows. Together with your architect, decide in which year — out of the 50 — an item will need significant repair, and enter that amount at today’s costs.
The only figure you perhaps cannot have is essential upgrading to comply with new legislation. The Disability Discrimination Act, for example, or environmental protection may require upgrading. They are not easily priced; so a contingency figure should be added.
Total each column downwards, and then across, to give a 50-year total. Divide this by 50, and you have your annual sum to set aside. Each year you should revisit the chart and increase all figures to the current rate by adding inflation to last year’s figure and carrying this across to the totals and annual rate. This means you will be increasing your saving slightly each year.
The biggest annual set-aside I have found has been £25,000 for a truly enormous church. The lowest has been about £1000.
It may be obvious, but if your treasurer takes this figure, adds to it the diocesan quota for clergy costs and the costs for running the pastoral and liturgical life of the church, you will have the cost of church sustainability. For struggling churches this process quantifies the challenge, and often shows it to be potentially achievable. For others, it takes the worry out of good stewardship.
My dream is that dioceses will work with all their churches to collate this information — not just try to quantify outstanding repairs in their own patch. The information would allow us to measure the challenge of sustaining all our churches, and enable us to develop partnerships and programmes to achieve that aim.
|
back to Features
previous story
|
next story 
.gif "Caris Magazine for girls aged 11 to 16 © site")
