A tax on churches - water authorities versus the clergy

This is a church.  It has a large roof, as churches do.  And on top of the depressing figures on modern British church attendance, it has another problem.  If God won't solve it, Ofwat must.  The BBC on Teeside reports that the water authorities  are changing the way buildings are billed for 'runoff' drainage - currently churches and charities are exempt, and ones like St Lukes in Thornaby only pay abouut £ 70.  Now the Northumbrian water authorities plan to charge them as if they were commercial buildings of similar size.  From 2010 they will pay 9 times more.
    From Scotland  a similar panic - with a case being made that churches, which are often used for meetings and charitable work as well as worship - should simply not be charged as if they were multinational banks in city centres.  It'll be interesting to see whether Scotland solves the problem before England does; and what the Scottish-led Westminster government sees fit to do about that.

Comments

[Stuart Hartill]

Any non-Christian in a small community who's tried to book a church hall for a charity event will see the flaw in the Scottish argument.
Churches do not support community and charity events - only ones which echo the ethic (or prejudice) of that church. This prevents even organisations like Amnesty International from running small town activities.
To take an even more suprising example - while in my community an Anglican vicar helps CAFOD and some Catholics help Christian Aid, in another you couldn't even run a Christian Aid event in the village Catholic church because Catholics oppose Christian Aid's policy on sex education and contraception.