A £1.8 million Government-funded pilot programme to repair and enhance England’s listed places of worship was launched by the Heritage Minister, Michael Ellis, at St Ann’s Church in Manchester on Monday.

Churches, synagogues and mosques can apply for up to £10,000 each.

The programme comes after last year’s “Taylor Review: Sustainability of English Churches and Cathedrals”, which found that church buildings played a “vital role” in providing public services and a sense of identity to communities across the country.

The 18-month scheme will be run by Historic England and will test the recommendations made in the Taylor Review across the largely urban area of Greater Manchester. A second pilot will run in rural Suffolk.

A number of listed Anglican churches have been identified that make good candidates for repair funding to enhance community engagement. They include St Thomas, Halliwell, which is said to have great potential to work in partnership with the local school but is in need of modernisation work.

Dr David Walker, Bishop of Manchester said historic church buildings are worth investing in.

“Church buildings are an important and much-loved part of the heritage of Greater Manchester.

“Many are also well used to provide much-needed community facilities. We are delighted that Manchester has been chosen for this pilot to help fund urgent repairs in some of our…

The MP for Birkenhead announced he would sit as an independent on Thursday after 40 years representing Labour in the Wirral seat.

Field said he has been subjected to online abuse since his decision, with one user calling him a “Tory rent boy” who should “f*** off and die”.

An email sent to him read: “The claim of antisemitism is obviously bogus AND YOU KNOW IT. Israel is the purest [evil] on earth and you are siding with them.”

Field told The Mail on Sunday: “Sadly, this provides a snapshot of the bile that exists beneath public life.”

Meanwhile, the Labour leader has said Field did not have to resign the Labour whip over the anti-Semitism row.

While Jeremy Corbyn said he was “sorry” Field had resigned, and condemned bullying, he insisted that there had to be “democratic debate within the party”.

Asked about Mr Field’s claims of bullying in the party, Corbyn said he did not know what the claims were.

“I invite all MPs to take part in the discussion and the debate,” he said.

“Obviously bullying and intimidation have no place whatsoever in any political party, particularly the Labour Party, but there has to be democratic debate within the party.”

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Thought to be the only free UK-based Christian-made dating app for believers, SALT is already open to pre-registrations ahead of an official launch later this month.

Founder, Paul Rider said he conceived the idea after sharing negative experiences of Christian dating services with his friends.

He told Premier: “I think there was a general consensus that there’s a gap between what was already on offer for Christian and what people want and expect from a dating app.”

SALT is being presented as an alternative to meeting people through church where “pressure and unrealistic expectations” can sometimes leave Christians disappointed, the app’s inventors say.

They believe Christians can struggle to meet anyone in their own church circles but SALT is intended to help them widened their search and take the awkwardness out of dating.

Research published earlier this year shows 63 per cent of single church-going women have not been on a date with a fellow member of their congregation in at least 24 months.

Mr Rider continued: “We thought that if we could provide something that was going to be completely free of charge, was based here in the UK and had a double opt-in – so that you can only send and receive messages from people that you’ve both chosen to match with – that could be well-received.”

Click here to listen to Premier’s Tola Mbakwe speaking with Paul Rider at SALT:

His plea follows the deaths of at least two military personnel who were killed in explosions at a military airport on the edge of the Syrian capital on Saturday night.

A group monitoring the war confirmed the killings and said eleven people were also wounded in the incident.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the blasts that rocked Damascus are believed to have been caused by an Israeli strike.

Syrian pro-government media initially blamed the blasts on Israel.

But state media later quoted an unnamed Syrian military official as saying the explosions were caused by an electrical malfunction in a munition depot nearby.

The leader of the Catholic Church appealed to the international community and “all the actors involved” to use diplomacy, dialogue and negotiations “in respect for international humanitarian law and to safeguard the lives of civilians”.

Addressing people in St Peter’s Square, Francis said: “The winds of war are still blowing and troubling news reaches us about the risks of a possible humanitarian catastrophe (in Syria’s Idlib province).”

Hundreds of thousands of civilians in the Idlib area have nowhere to flee.

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Under the country’s proposed new constitution, marriage would be defined as between “two people” rather than between “a man and a woman.” The proposed change has been spearheaded by Mariela Castro, the daughter of former president Raul Castro.

But Santiago de Cuba Archbishop Dionisio Garcia called on Cubans not to “ignore what nature has given us” for fear of “regrettable consequences.”

Garcia said the acceptance of same-sex marriage was “alien” to Cuban values and claimed that the proposal stemmed from the “cultural imperialism” of powerful countries that use the effect of globalisation “to create a uniform culture that accepts and adopts its criteria (while) disqualifying those of others.”

In an online message, the Episcopal Conference called on Cubans to look for “other legal ways” to protect homosexual unions.

Several Evangelical churches in Cuba also campaigned against the changes by issuing leaflets which promote marriage as a union between a man and woman.

Meanwhile, Cuban LGBT activists have created their own posters promoting same-sex marriage.

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