Chancel insurance?

If you're scammed into paying for a chancel liability search it'll often come back with a may be in an area with liability because that's the reply you'll get if there is no data on liability. Then you'll be offered the chance to pay again for insurance you don't need.

Contact the local vicar and ask. You'll probably be told that there's no known liability and can forget this particular legal risk scam.

It's not a scam you can avoid other than by getting a solicitor who asks you want searches to do. Many will just do the pointless search anyway even for properties in big cities where any liability would be insignificant anyway. It's more of a potential issue in the country towns.

To the vicar:

Question: "I'm considering purchasing a flat in the parish. Can you tell me whether there is any chancel repair liability and if there is, give some idea of which areas may be covered by it?

Thanks for any assistance you can offer!"

Answer: "as far as I know there is none, but you will need to get firm legal advice to confirm it"

Told my mortgage lender the Q&A and they said that they were content with no insurance.

Told my solicitor:

"I contacted xxx, the vicar of this parish, and he informed me that he believes that there is not a chancel repair liability. After informing mortgage lender that there was a Chancel Check report that there might be chancel repair liability, while the vicar said that he believed there was no liability, they informed me that they do not require me to have this insurance.

I have considered the urban location, the statement from the vicar, the contents of the 1/6/2007 version of the CML Lenders' Handbook for England and Wales, the mortgage lender Part 2 document, 1/6/207 version, the statement of mortgage lender, my own financial means, my general view that this is primarily a product that seeks to exploit home buyers and the opinion of the Law Society and its campaign. Unless you have more facts that are directly and explicitly specific to this property, parish or lender that I should consider, I'm not willing to purchase this insurance."

That's the last I heard of that.

Don't go contacting the vicar if you're in a country town. Ask prospective neighbors who've recently bought instead what they did. Where there is liability there's a chance that asking the question could alert them but anyone who is interested probably already is alerted by now. Not a significant risk in a big city but more of a potential one in a country town.

There's quite a long detailed thread on this topic here:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/444583

I'm sure a lot of it is scare mongering ("don't ask the vicar, in case it alerts him to the possibility of raising some cash for repairs", "don't investigate too deeply, because if you find there is a definate liability, you will have to declare it to the insurers - so it's better not to know") - but I think I'd just be tempted to pay the £60 to minimise any potential hassle. If you ask your solicitor about it, he may well charge you that much for giving his advice.

Although, I guess the insurance company thrive on people like me!

With a no answer I don't agree that insurance would be void. Doctor, do I have any heart attack risk? Doctor: no. Insurer: your life assurance is void because you were checked and found to have no heart attack risk. Silly answer, no reason to decline or void in such cases.

With a yes answer things are more interesting. Is the insurer also supposed to check and offer rates appropriate to the answer? I think so, so I don't think that insurance would automatically be void. That's because chancel insurance isn't just insuring for the fact that there is chancel exposure (you have a car) but whether there is any chancel repair bill to pay during the time of cover (do you have an accident in the car while covered?). Knowing that there's risk should be declared fully and frankly to the insurer and the insurer should set an appropriate charge based on their view of the risk.

This is part of why I distinguished between urban and rural locations. Urban and all of the risks are much lower from the chance of there being liability to the level of payout required if there is a bill to pay.

I don't expect chancel insurance to vanish in 2013 since all that happens then is elimination of uncertainty about whether you actually have a reason to buy the cover, leaving the question of whether you have a bill to pay as what the insurance covers.

It isn't necessarily the local vicar you should contact anyway. The Church whose chancel might need repairing is the church of the parish that your property would have been in in 1836! Lots more parishes have been created since then.

If it is the right church then the very fact that he is a vicar rather than a rector tells you that somewhere in the parish there will be some land with the Chancel Liability.

There risk is very small and we would all be greatly helped if lenders would state in their Part 2 of the CML handbook that unless we have reason to believe there is a particular risk, Chancel Searches and Insurance are not necessary. They do not say that, so we have to take the view that they do require the matter to be covered. Many major lenders, for instance, quite clearly say that they do not require us to carry out environmental searches.

Maybe Richard Webster has been in the business long enough to tell us what happened before these firms saw a chance to make some money exploiting home buyers?

Nobody bothered with Chancel Searches unless there was some clue in the documents produced that there could be an issue. However that was before the government made a half baked attempt at changing the law in 2003, giving Churches until 13 October 2013 to register any liabilities they thought could exist. It is this possibility of registration that has caused the Chancel Check Searches etc to become relevant.

Simple abolition of the liability would have been much better and would saved the Churches having the appalling negative PR of asking those with no interest in the Church for money. Old buildings haven't got much to do with Christianity anyway and warehouse type buildings on industrial estates are much better these days for meetings.