First World War Centenary Cathedral Repairs Fund Evaluation
In December 2017, ERS Ltd was appointed by the Cathedrals and Church Buildings Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England (CCB) to evaluate the First World War Centenary Cathedral Repairs Fund (totalling £40 million). The Fund was set up to support urgent repair work at listed Anglican and Catholic cathedrals in England to keep them weatherproof, safe and open to the public and to prevent further deterioration to the buildings. Further, this aimed to ensure cathedrals would be in an appropriate condition host First World War commemoration events.
Broadly, ERS’s evaluation findings were based on quantitative and qualitative data gathered through 89 semi-structured telephone consultations with a mix of grant team members, Expert Panel members, cathedral representatives and architects or surveyors.
Aims of the evaluation included assessing:
To what extent the grants have met the Fund’s original objectives and criteria;
The extent to which the grant programme has met the identified long-term maintenance and repair needs of Anglican and Catholic cathedrals in England;
The wider economic impact of the funding;
The wider community benefits of the funding; and
Lessons learned in terms of grant processes, to inform future delivery.
In addition, as part of the evaluation, ERS prepared individual, high-level summaries of all 130 repair projects undertaken as part of grant-funded activity, based on analysis of grant applications, project reports and telephone interviews with cathedral representatives and architects.
ERS submitted an interim report covering emerging themes in April 2018 with the final report (including infographics – examples of which can be found here) submitted in 2018.