The Church of England believes the island’s registered buildings list is not fit for purpose where churches are concerned.

A report into the Diocese of Sodor and Man, led by Archdeacon Andrew Brown (pictured), has outlined the church’s dire financial position, made worse by owning a large number of redundant or loss-making buildings.

The report says that while the church ’is not a conservation agency’, it does own many registered buildings around the island including several historic churches.

However, the report said that even though 20 church buildings are registered, there are churches which the diocese consider most worthy for protection that aren’t on the list.

It added: ’This obviously means that three churches which we would consider most worthy of protection in terms of history and heritage are not registered, whereas some of the registered churches we would consider to be of little value either architecturally or in terms of the mission of God are registered.’

One of the issues raised by the diocese is that many of the buildings which have been registered, were done by parochial church councils in the hope of receiving government funds, which rarely came, to maintain the buildings.

The report says that there is ’currently no will in government or its civil service to revise the registered building list by the removal of any buildings, and a zeal to protect those buildings on it’.

It added: ’We are of the strong opinion that the registered building list so far as it applies to churches is not fit for purpose.

’We would like to see a two tier list, the upper tier being those churches agreed by conservationists and the special interest groups to be of great value to the island’s heritage, and qualifying for support from public monies.’

The report continues to argue that if the government continues to exercise such oversight on registered church buildings, then it should pay towards the works required to maintain them.

The diocese would also like to see an ’ecclesiastical exemption from some aspects of central control’ which it argues would ’free the churches of time consuming bureaucracy’.

In addition, the diocese report says that the CoE wants the government to fund repairs to the island’s built heritage, both sacred and secular.

The report also wants to introduce mechanism whereby, ’old churches’ could be taken out of the care of the parishes and the diocese.

These churches could then be handed over to conservation groups to run and maintained with the support of government or Manx National Heritage.