Architecture Update: Police thyself, churches told

RELIGIOUS bodies will now have to apply for listed building consent if they want to alter their buildings unless they have a recognised system of control. Until now only the Church of England has controlled changes instigated by clergy.

Many listed interiors belonging to other denominations have been destroyed. Recent desecrations include the stripping out of box pews in the 18th-century Baptist chapel at Great Gidding, near Huntingdon, and the removal of a Georgian interior from a former Huguenot chapel in Spitalfields, east London. Denominations that have agreed to self-policing are the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church, the Methodist Church, the Baptist Union and the United Reform Church.