Up the ladder to the roof

Your report (May 11) shows that the Church of England's renewed campaign for nearly £1bn of taxpayers' money over four years to support their crumbling churches is slipping into top gear. No mention is made in this PR putsch of the hundreds of millions already contributed by the public through the Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage or the lower rates of VAT for repairs to listed places of worship (denied to non-religious buildings, which are surely part of our heritage, too). But the rattling of this bottomless begging bowl grates, given that the Church Commissioners' assets run to nearly £5bn, and last year alone the gains on revaluation or sale of assets ran to £0.7bn. It's time to sell off some more of the 4,000 churches with little architectural or historical merit to fund the deficit not covered by the commissioners.
Keith Porteous Wood
National Secular Society

Simon Jenkins's love of church buildings is well known (Comment, May 12). But his disconnectedness with their fundamental role and function is puzzling. Perhaps because he does not share the faith which caused them to be built, he cannot seem to understand that there is an issue beyond heritage. - the centuries-old duty of care which a church has to every citizen within its parish boundaries. This includes recent and work to foster relations with people of other faiths. On each Tuesday here, we welcome between 150 and 200 people to public dialogues led by a Muslim leader and her Christian counterpart. Parish churches do not need to be handed back to local communities. They already belong to them. They are inclusivist by nature. That is the point of a national church.
Canon Chris Chivers
Blackburn Cathedral

As a Quaker and employee of Satan's agency (aka the Health and Safety Executive), I read Simon Jenkins with amusement. We don't have a locally funded state church because some of our ancestors fought a civil war for the right not to pay for hirling priests. In today's secular world there can be no objection to transforming redundant Anglican churches into stables for a local disabled riders charity. Anything more ambitious must surely flounder on the question of what theolgy the council hiring the priest would require him or her to preach. HSE would not be involved as it does not enforce the building regulations. If it were, maybe a little more common sense would be applied to the question of what our beautiful and redundant churches could be used for.
David Lewis
Southsea, Hants

Mr Jenkins may think the use of scaffold over ladders in replacing church roof tiles is a "stupid rule". There are on average 14 deaths a year due to falls from ladders. Does he truly advocate prioritising cost over human life?
Thibault Lury
Belfast

I suggest Mr Jenkins reads Deuteronomy, Ch 22: "When thou buildest a new house, thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall from thence." Or perhaps he believes that any worker who falls to his death off a church roof goes straight to heaven?
Simon Hester
HSE inspector, London