A PCC treasurer has been told by Ecclesiastical Insurance that its policies do not cover the coronavirus pandemic.
Mary Woolley, a parochial church councillor for the 13th-century Grade II* listed St Mary the Virgin, Lynton, in Devon, tried to make a claim under the business interruption clause, covering loss of earnings and closure owing to disease. But, when she contacted the insurer, she was turned down.
“They said: ‘No chance on either count. Sorry, but there you go.’ That hit a nerve,” she said. “Ecclesiastical is in a slightly funny position in that it is owned by the Allchurches Trust, which gives money to charity — and we are a charity. It has strong links with the Church of England. Their reaction wasn’t: ‘We can feel your pain.’ It was, rather: ‘We couldn’t possibly help our churches in that way: we wouldn’t be able to afford it.’”
One third of her church’s income is raised through service collections and donations from tourists. “There are two sections in the policy covering lost earnings,” she said. “One was closure by public decree, which seemed to be pretty clear, but the answer was: ‘Ah, yes, but not for disease.’ The other was disease. There is a long and absolutely hilarious list of things for which we would be covered if we closed the church, such as leprosy and smallpox, but, unfortunately for us, Covid-19 wasn’t invented when the list was created.
It would not be viable for us to cover virus outbreaks, says Ecclesiastical Insurance https://t.co/ztujfXfdRE
— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) April 23, 2020