the other day I emailed my nearest church to ask if I could hire it for a few hours to do some recording in. (Myself playing some folk songs on the guitar.)

They just replied saying "Unfortunately, we do not hold a Recording Licence which would be necessary for this purpose".

Can anyone tell me what they are referring to? (in the UK)

Had a look online but couldn't find any satisfactory answers.
CCLI (Christian copyright licensing website) is the site Google suggests, where you can buy various licenses. There are all very cheap - around the £20 mark - and if that was the sole impediment I would just treat my local church to one!

But I'm not sure that's the right thing: they all seem to do with PRS and copyright - i.e. broadcasting or recording performances of other people's music, as opposed to recording per se.

So can anyone tell me what sort of license they mean?