Published: Thursday, 20th November, 2008 08:00
English Heritage visit church
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HERITAGE bosses have visited a Victorian church at the centre of a development row.
Members of St Saviour’s Christian Centre in Coley had applied for planning permission to replace the 19th century church with a modern multi-purpose building. However, Reading Borough Council officers opposed it and applied for the church to be listed. English Heritage is now deciding whether or not to recommend that it is protected.
English Heritage spokeswoman Debbie Holden said: “We will be writing up our report and making a recommendation to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport for the Secretary of State to decide whether it is listed. After the decision is made, then we can release all our advice.”
A decision over the building, on the corner of Berkeley Avenue and Wolseley Street, will probably not be made for a couple of months.
St Saviour’s Christian Centre, part of the Elim Pentecostal Church, took over ownership from the Church of England nearly 20 years ago and now its leaders are reconsidering plans to replace it with a two-storey building. Proposals included a hall, bookshop and nursery but the church withdrew the application before it could be considered by the planning committee after council officers recommended refusal.
Assistant pastor Tayo Joseph said: “We have withdrawn the application to go into further conversation and dialogue with the council. Some of their objections were valid, some of them were not entirely what we would have expected from them. We are just going back to the drawing board with the council. We don’t know what’s going to come out of that.
“There are different views but we want more conversation. A huge number of people are in favour of what we wanted to do, including many parents of the children who come to our youth groups.”
Around 350 residents signed a petition opposing the plans, with many keen to preserve the historic red brick building and concerned about noise and traffic problems.
See letters to the editor published in today's Reading Chronicle.
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