FIEC’s trusteeship services, now known as the Fellowship Property Trust (or FPT) is closing its services over the next year or so and many of the churches that have been using FPT in the past are being encouraged to use Church Growth Trust for the same services. One of these services is the role of holding trustee, which involves holding the title to the property, so that the church do not have to register the title for the property every time a new managing trustee is appointed, and dealing with the closure of the charity if the church closes at some point in the future. Church Growth Trust (CGT) also stores the property deeds in our secure and fireproof cabinets, scanning them and making them available for trustees to view. As part of the holding trusteeship services, CGT signs up the occupying churches to Stewardship’s Consultancy Helpline.
We are delighted to announce that the first holding trusteeship has now been transferred and is in place for Blenheim Free Church at Maidenhead. This was a fairly straightforward process, as CGT’s solicitors have put together standard documents – a Resolution for the church to pass and a Management Agreement between CGT and the church. As Chris Spackman from Blenheim Free Church states “Giles Arnold from Church Growth Trust has been helpful in explaining the options available to us and co-ordinating the work with the solicitors. He was also able to review the deeds for the property and give us some general advice, so that the managing trustees could make an informed decision. We are pleased that the process in the end was very straightforward and we look forward to working with Church Growth Trust in the future”.
Jonathan Bond of the Fellowship Property Trust and Giles Arnold have been working closely to ensure that the transfer of trusteeships from FPT to CGT is as straightforward as possible for the churches. Jonathan Bond states “it has been a hard decision for our trustees to close the trusteeship services, but we are confident that where churches do not wish to set up their own CIO to which the property would be transferred, Church Growth Trust will provide churches with an excellent service”.
As Giles Arnold from CGT points out “providing independent evangelical churches with our trusteeship services is part of our passion for keeping church properties in Gospel use for the future. It is great to be able to help churches understand their options and, where appropriate, provide them with this valuable holding trusteeship services at a low cost”.
