Michael Fabricant has welcomed the English Heritage grant of £22,000 made to Lichfield Cathedral under the new English Heritage and Wolfson Foundation joint grants scheme. "As well as being a place of worship, Cathedrals attract tourists and stimulate the economy of the cities in which they are based yet they receive no support from the taxpayer. I am pleased that lottery money and the Wolfson charitable trust have awarded a one-off grant to our Cathedral. It costs around £1.5 million a year to keep Lichfield Cathedral open and this will make a contribution to this".

The grant will be used to repair and renew rainwater gullies to the North aisle and nave clerestory and takes the amount that has been offered to Lichfield since the start of the English Heritage Cathedral Grants Scheme in 1991 to £937,997.

This year sees the start of a new partnership between English Heritage and the Wolfson Foundation which will boost the funding for England’s Cathedrals until 2010. In 2004, due to a decline in English Heritage’s Grant-in-Aid, funding for Cathedrals has had to be cut to £1 million per annum. This new joint grants scheme with the Wolfson Foundation enables English Heritage to restore the pre-2004 funding level and double individual grant thresholds so helping Cathedrals to undertake larger repair projects. This latest scheme with the Wolfson Foundation builds on the partnership they have had with the Foundation since 2002 during which time awards of over £3 million have been made to historic gardens and to war memorials.