Offords Out & About April - May 2020

All Saints Church - Fabric Report 2020 - including church roof update There has been no change to the contents of the church during the past year.

The drainage system on the north side of the church was improved last summer by the provision of new drains from the existing gullies on the north side of the building, running to a new soakaway in the churchyard. The new system appears to be working satisfactorily. These drainage works really needed to be tackled before any other work is carried out to the church building.

In this connection, the PCC also had plans to reorder the west end of the church by installing a WC and providing facilities for serving refreshments. It had been hoped to continue with these proposals whilst at the same time dealing with the need for a replacement roof following the theft of lead in November 2018.

However, each of these jobs on its own would involve significant expense and would require grant funding to cover the bulk of the cost and it became apparent that we could not raise sufficient funds to do both jobs at once. The replacement of the roof is clearly the more important task and so, although the PCC still wishes to carry them out, the internal reorganisation (reordering works) will have to wait for a while yet.

As far as the roof is concerned, the contractors who did the drainage work provided a rough quotation which was rather less than we had been expecting and so we are now waiting for a revised specification (based on a detailed inspection recently carried out) which will enable competing quotes to be obtained and will also allow applications for grants to be made. It will also be necessary for a “faculty” (the church equivalent to planning permission) to be obtained. This is because we need to abide by the General Synod’s wish to make the Church of England carbon neutral by 2030 and any roof works will need to incorporate appropriate insulation, which in turn means that what we are putting up is different from what was there before. It is intended that the new roofing will be steel rather than lead. Consent may be needed from other bodies and, while no opposition is expected, all this will take time.

In amongst all this, last November the church architects carried out the “QI” or quinquennial inspection – a survey of the church and churchyard which is carried out every five years at all churches within the Church of England. There are repair works which need to be done, a lot of them fairly minor, and a group of PCC members is reviewing the report with Revd. Jes Salt, to plan a programme of works.

As we said last year, we intend to keep everyone informed about the roof repairs as matters progress, but given the number of bodies involved the process is inevitably slower than we would really like and so no news doesn’t mean that nothing is happening behind the scenes – it almost certainly is!

Please feel free to speak to a Churchwarden or a member of the PCC for up to date information.

John Simpkin & Sue Dorrington - Church8Wardens