Research services

Tender description

The work to be procured covers two strands: 1) Evaluation of the effectiveness and impact of the pilots in order to understand whether they should be scaled up to a national approach. We therefore need to understand their effectiveness and their impact. The approach being piloted is new and innovative as it presents a new model for places of worship to become more sustainable. 2) Research and evaluation to understand the effectiveness and impact of initiatives that have happened over the last 10 years. These initiatives would have been carried out by, for example, the Church of England, Heritage Lottery Fund and Historic England and includes the Government run, Listed Places of Worship scheme. Most of these interventions have already been evaluated but we want to develop a coherent overview of these evaluations to identify which elements could be considered to be most effective. All of this research, data and evaluation should be presented in a coherent report (minimum 25 pages) in order to provide the evidence to develop a suite of possible interventions and the evidence to support a future spending review bid for support for listed places of worship - there is no current, coherent or strategic understanding of the scale of need for Government intervention in sustaining listed places of worship. It is essential that the pilot schemes are properly evaluated by a Supplier with the right knowledge and expertise, to ensure that the pilots deliver on their principle function, as a means of creating a body of evidence indicating the best way to support the future sustainability of listed places of worship, as well as the funding levels which might be needed for the sector in the future.