THE TIMES carried a really excellent fact-check and demolition job by its religious-affairs correspondent, Kaya Burgess, on Reform UK’s proposal to help save Britain’s “Christian heritage”. Even 41, as Burgess pointed out, would amount to 0.09 per cent of the churches that have closed in England since the 1960s. It is also 41 times the number of former C of E churches that have become mosques. Restrictive covenants applied by the Church Commissioners mean that redundant churches can never become sites for worship by other religions. Disorganised Protestantism, in the form of Charismatic or Evangelical churches, is also hidden from the secular imagination.

Source: The Times February 27, 2026 12:38 UTC