Overview
- Home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf set out a policy to give immediate listed status to about 40,000 churches and create a separate planning use class to block conversion into places of worship for other religions.
- Listed status would restrict alterations, require building upkeep and limit changes of use, but the proposal remains a party pledge rather than law.
- Reform UK cites roughly 41 church-to-mosque cases, while experts note Church of England buildings are consecrated and typically sold with covenants that bar non-Christian worship.
- Reporting records just two direct Church of England sales to other religions since 1968, both to Sikh gurdwaras, with one long-closed church later used as a mosque and a recent Hanley case constrained by a covenant.
- In Watford, converting the closed St Thomas’ United Reformed Church into a mosque was approved, a separate Grade II Baptist conversion was refused and may be resubmitted, and the mosque group argues that reusing derelict buildings benefits local communities.