Thinking About Re-opening Churches for Personal Prayer.

The present intention of the Government is that Churches will be accessible initially for personal prayer only.

This is providing that adequate measures are in place and have been assessed and signed-off for each building.

The exact requirements are being worked on, and they will include:

  • Steward(s) being present during the time a Church is open
  • Hygiene and social distancing being properly observed at all times
  • Seating in designated places only
  • A maximum number in a Church building at any one time
  • Careful observance of one way systems where possible
  • Cleansing of all surfaces touched after use
  • The removal of all non-single use printed materials
  • Toilets must also be kept closed.

Please start thinking whether you might be able to volunteer to be a Steward, say for an hour at a time, so that we can respond quickly and open the Churches when given the go ahead.

One of the tricky things will be that those considered to be at high or moderate risk cannot be stewards, so we will be looking for people under 70 in the first instance.

If under 18s are volunteering they will need to be accompanied either by someone from the same household or an adult with a Parish DBS check.

There should be more details next week.’