chancel repair liability?

[robgil]

im looking through a legal pack and came across a section titled 'chancel repair liability'.
can someone please put this in layman's terms for me? do i have to pay towards the nearby church should it need any building work done?
or have i got that completely wrong?

 

[AMc]

If your house has a chancel repair liability then yes I think it broadly translates as you stump up a proportion of the cost of keeping the rain out of the church. I believe you can insure against it but it has been discussed here before which is probably more helpful, for example....
http://www.periodproperty.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9862&hilit=chancel+repair

 

[robgil]

thanks for the link , i really should try harder to find that search button in future.

so , basically i can buy insurance to protect me from this should the church decide to sue me for part of the costs of a new roof for example?
thats a bit harsh isnt it? luckily its not an awful lot of money and i am sure the local church does do a lot for the community but it does make you wonder why there is no 'opt out' clause for none religious types or for those of a different religious background than that of the local church.
i wonder what would happen if a local mosque decided to levy charges on the surrounding family's/households to foot the repair of their roof? :shock:

 

[Penners]

Chancel repair liability is one of the conveyancing solicitors' hot topics, at the moment. It has cropped up a few times, in some parts of the country, so everyone's running scared of it.

As AMc said, if it applies to your house, then yes - you could potentially find yourself approached for a contribution to the upkeep of the church.

I'm not poo-pooing the thing, but it's not worth getting too worked up about. Your solicitor should be able to give you a definitive answer as to whether it applies to your property, and can arrange insurance for you. Is this a house that you're buying? If so, then your solicitor will probably suggest approaching the vendor to pay the premium.

 

[Schoolmarm]

Chancel repair liability is serious stuff. There was one couple who were landed with a bill of hundreds of thousands to replace the whole roof.


Check with your solicitor or insurer if the policy will still be ok if you knew beforehand that chancel liability existed.

I understood the policies were for people who had no idea whether liability existed or not and it was to protect them from a local church suddenly saying...Hey, did you know you had to pay for all our repairs.

Most insurance doesn't cover "pre-existing condition or problems"

 

[Flyfisher]

i wonder what would happen if a local mosque decided to levy charges on the surrounding family's/households to foot the repair of their roof? :shock:

That's not a fair comparison. The church can't arbitrarily decide to levy a charge, the liability is a historical legal liability arising, I think, for the church relinquishing its land in the first place. Similar to a covenant really. Thus, a property either has the liability or it doesn't; it's not a case of someone in the church suddenly deciding it would be a good way of raising some funds. The confusion seems to arise because it's often not known (by the church or anyone else) if there is a liability or not, hence there is a potential risk that can be insured against. If a property is known to have a chancel liability I doubt it would be possible to buy insurance.

The whole issue will be sorted out soon because the church is required to register all chancel liabilities by a certain date (can't remember the details), after which it loses any unregistered rights. So I assume church lawyers are busy rummaging through their historical records before the deadline. All this won't mean an end to chancel liabilities but the affected properties will be explicitly identified. While this sounds like a good thing, the downside - I guess - is that it may no longer be possible to buy insurance against it, or it will become much more costly.

More info here: http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/briefings/snpc-04535.pdf

 

[robgil]

oh dear, so , would you buy a house thats liable?
im off to an auction tomorrow and the legal pack says the house is liable.
i really dont want to be responsible for a church as well as an old run down house.

 

[Flyfisher]

Hmm. Difficult if you know for sure that it's liable. Might be worth having a look at the condition of the church!

I wonder if this is the reason for the house going to auction?

It's still worth investigating if it's possible to buy insurance to cover any costs that might arise from this liability.

I have to say that such a liability would put me off purchasing such a property (unless I could get insurance cover).

 

[robgil]

is it the house or the parish thats liable?

ive had another look at the documents and it says ;

The above building is located within the historical boundary of a tithe district within a parish which continues to have a potential chancel repair liability based upon historical parish boundary data and the relevant inland revenue indices held by the national archive.

so , it states that there is chancel repair liability within the parish but it isn't specific to any one building.
is this just a normal precaution in any legal pack , or is this telling me that there is a good possibility that the house is liable?

the red writing above is also coloured red in the legal pack and the church is pretty much a stones throw away from the house.

 

[Flyfisher]

It reads to me like they are just covering themselves.

It could mean there is a potential liability but they don't know for sure, or it could mean there is a definite liability giving rise to potential repair costs.

I'd still investigate insurance options.

Incidentally, I'm sure I've read somewhere that although chancel liabilities are commonly spread across a number of properties, each are jointly and severally liable, i.e. the church can claim any resulting costs from any or all of the affected properties. So don't rely on any costs being spread evenly.

 

[robgil]

i was just going to say if the cost is spread amongst a whole parish , individually it may not cost much at all.

 

[Schoolmarm]

I found this;

http://www.cherry-picked-insurance.co.uk/news/useful-information/chancel-repair-liability-insurance


With this especially;

"You can check whether your property is in an area that has potential for Chancel Repair Liability by having a chancel repair check carried out - a solicitor should be able to do this for you. If it is, you can take out a Chancel Repair Liability insurance policy to cover this risk. "

 

[robgil]

ive just read this..

http://www.chancel.org.uk/chancel-repairs.php

probably a rare example but i cant help feeling sorry for those poor people.

''Chancel Searches are a relatively new phenomenon, following a high profile 2003 court case relating to chancel repair obligations. In brief the case was as follows:

Aston Cantlow v Wallbanks Case (2003)

Mr & Mrs Wallbank inherited a farm holding in 1986 which was within the historical parish boundary's. When they inherited the property they also inherited the Chancel repair liabilities by succession. In 1990 the Church (Chancel) was in need of repairs, and in 1994 the Parochial Church Council requested the the Wallbanks pay for the cost of repairs.

The Wallbanks chose to dispute their liability, and ultimately lost their case being ordered to pay somewhere in the region of £200,000 towards repairs (the cost increasing significantly in the 9 years the case took to get to the House of Lords! As well as a hefty bill for legal expenses incurred by the Church, around £250,000!''

 

[Gareth Hughes]

I wonder if all those rival bidders know this?

 

[robgil]

I found this;

http://www.cherry-picked-insurance.co.uk/news/useful-information/chancel-repair-liability-insurance


With this especially;

"You can check whether your property is in an area that has potential for Chancel Repair Liability by having a chancel repair check carried out - a solicitor should be able to do this for you. If it is, you can take out a Chancel Repair Liability insurance policy to cover this risk. "

thankyou , thats not so bad then.
the church does look in decent nick as well , although it does look like its been whalloped during the war because half its steeple is missing.

 

[robgil]

I wonder if all those rival bidders know this?

probably Gareth , its just that our solicitor hasn't bothered to get back to us in time for the auction.
ive been reading through the legal pack tonight , most of it is straight forward but the rest is
made up from that incomprehensible language that only solicitors can understand , i think that's the important stuff that i should really need to know before tomorrow.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

There's a thread here which may be of use:
http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.u...companies/13821-chancel-repair-liability.html
From the photo of the church, there doesn't seem to be a definable chancel (at the east end) and though there's some patching on the nave roof, this (and the tower) are not the chancel and should not be your liability.

 

[jocelyn plummer]

Before we completed our purchase in November the Chancel Liability policy was purchased by our Vendors, I think it was about £60 , one off payment, done and dusted. It should have been paid for them when they purchased in 2005.

 

[robgil]

if you have insurance based on a 'maybee the house is at risk' then the church in their dash to get all property's registered as liable register your house, will your insurance still be valid?
i mean even though there is no claim against them yet, the risk of there ever being one has increased considerably.

would your motor insurance still be valid should you tell them ''yes i am likely to have a crash and i really need insurance'' as opposed to ''no i am not likely to have a crash but i might get insurance just in case''?

 

[Penners]

Check with your solicitor or insurer if the policy will still be ok if you knew beforehand that chancel liability existed.

I understood the policies were for people who had no idea whether liability existed or not and it was to protect them from a local church suddenly saying...Hey, did you know you had to pay for all our repairs.

Most insurance doesn't cover "pre-existing condition or problems"

Of course you're right about not being able to insure against a certainty, Marm, but in this case I think you can still get insurance if you know that there is a potential liability.

As I understand it, the risk that you're insuring against is the risk that the church may/will invoke the liability at some point in the future.

We're in the process of buying a house, and our solicitor said to us: "I'll check whether there's a chancel repair liability. If there is, you may wish to take out an insurance policy. You might even get the vendor to pay the premium."

robgil - I would hound your solicitor to give you definitive advice on this point before the auction. It would be a shame to lose the chance of the purchase if it turned out that a premium of a couple of hundred pounds could have resolved the matter.