Whilst I welcome the award of a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to St Mary’s Church, Kemp Town, I should also like to point out the inherent differences in support that occurs in the Anglican Church.

Like St Mary’s, St Leonard’s Church, in Hove, was also earmarked for closure some years ago.

Like St Mary’s, St Leonard’s was (and still is) in a poor state of repair with a small congregation and serving a fairly diverse area.

In 2010, the Diocese of Chichester approached the regeneration team of the Churches Conservation Trust to assess the potential for additional community use of the building which may help to provide a sustainable future for St Mary’s.

Yet at St Leonard’s we have been told by the church that we’re too obsessed with saving a building.

Our plans for the future of St Leonard’s include opening it up for community use, especially serving young people and the isolated lonely of the area but the Diocese of Chichester appears to want none of that.

We are told all the time that ‘it’s only a building’. It’s true it’s not architecturally important; in fact it has very little architectural merit whatsoever. But more than 2,000 local people liked our ideas well enough to sign our petition to the bishop and almost every one of them said how much they loved the church, even if they don’t go regularly, so we wonder what it is the church really wants.

Do they want lovely buildings of architectural merit or do they want to serve the community, many of whom are fairly needy? We at St Leonard’s think we know the answer to that.

Yours sincerely Jenny Watts – representing the group, Saving St Leonard’s Bramble Rise