Chancel checks and liability

Hectors_House

I am in the process of buying a property in an older area of Nottingham surrounded (within a radius of 3 miles) by 6 Victorian-built churches.

One of these now resides in a building erected in the 1950's, having previously worshipped in a medieval era church situated approx. 3 miles away from the house.

They abandoned the medieval church when their parishioners moved closer to the city for work and have now come under the Diosese of Southwell and become joined to the church nearest the house, as well as those churches in the next suburb.

Does anyone know whether these churches can ask local home owners to pay for the upkeep of their newer buildings? Or does the liability only refer to upkeep of medieval churches?

As if buying a home weren't stressful enough I'd hate to find the local rector knocking on the door asking me for money to repair his roof! LOL!

Thanks in advance for any help with this.

zarazara

HI, if the property has a chancel repair liability attached to it then the liability stands, its doesnt matter about the actual age of the church building. There is inexpensive insurance which can be taken out. The solicitors who are doing your conveancing will put you intouch with the relevant firm who handles the insurance.

poppysarah

Ask your solicitor whether your house is one that has to pay. It's what you pay them for.

tom101

If the house does have a liability your solicitor can ask the vendor to take out indemnity insurance so it will cost you nothing.

rwknott

I would ask your solicitor as a friend of mine got caught with the and ended up paying out a huge sum of money.

Hectors_House

Thanks for the feedback folks.

I'll take a look at the paperwork we're sending back to our solicitor and tick the box telling him we want that looking into.

Being surrounded by so many churches is a worry - there are literally 6 within a miles radius alone...the local Tesco is built on their combined graveyard!

I hope your friend didn't have to do anything drastic like re-mortgaging, rwknott. Even being asked for a couple of hundred quid by the local vicar might be difficult for most of us to find in the current climate.

Woby_Tide

rwknott wrote: »

I would ask your solicitor as a friend of mine got caught with the and ended up paying out a huge sum of money.

Anymore details as there has only been one published case of a big payout required hence itbeing such a grey area. What situation did your friends end up in?

Woby_Tide

tom101 wrote: »

If the house does have a liability your solicitor can ask the vendor to take out indemnity insurance so it will cost you nothing.

If the house has a liability you won't get insurance. If it MAY have a liabiliity, the friendly *cough* insurers will cover you

zarazara

my house has chancel repair liability. when i bought the house years ago i took out insurnce. its a one off for life payment, was only approx £200. its done by a firm who specilises in this. unfortunatey i cant remember the name of the firm. it was arranged with my solicitors at conveyancing. there was no problem or anything like that. lots of houses have chancel repair liability and their owners dont know. my friend recently sold her 1930's semi where she'd lived for 20 yrs. it turned out that property had a CRL too. she was very suprised but it showed up at the sale search. i suppose solicitors look for it now whereas in the past they didnt seem to bother .

alisonp_2

Hectors_House wrote: »

I am in the process of buying a property in an older area of Nottingham surrounded (within a radius of 3 miles) by 6 Victorian-built churches.

One of these now resides in a building erected in the 1950's, having previously worshipped in a medieval era church situated approx. 3 miles away from the house.

They abandoned the medieval church when their parishioners moved closer to the city for work and have now come under the Diosese of Southwell and become joined to the church nearest the house, as well as those churches in the next suburb.

Does anyone know whether these churches can ask local home owners to pay for the upkeep of their newer buildings? Or does the liability only refer to upkeep of medieval churches?

As if buying a home weren't stressful enough I'd hate to find the local rector knocking on the door asking me for money to repair his roof! LOL!

Thanks in advance for any help with this.

There is a good chance your Solicitor will have raised enquiries about this, i.e. whether or not the seller has carried out a Chancel Repair Liaibility Search and whether or not this revealed a potential liability. If so, there may be a Policy already in place which will cover future buyers and their mortgagees.

Otherwise, ask your Solicitor about putting in place a Chancel Liability search which costs in the region of £15 plus vat. If a potential liability is revealed this can be covered with an Indemnity Policy which your solicitor will advise you about.

If there is already a liability revealed within the Title documents then a quotation will need to be obtained before proceeding - unfortunately the premium for this will be pretty high.

Geenie

Once you do a Chancel Repair Liaibility Search, you can start opening a whole can of worms and alerting people who may have remained none the wiser and not made any claim, until you made it known they could have one!!

So be very careful, and as already stated, if you want to insure, do it before any searches, as the cost will be much greater if any liability or potential risk to your house is found. Our solicitors, and they are a big firm with great experience, advised us to not do anything, as the chances of any liability were very remote, and papers and records that stated this sort of liability on a property have been lost over the centuries in many places, so nothing to back up the claim often.

Our parish church have done plenty of repairs over the decades and never came knocking at our house for cash as far as we know. The C of E have until October 2013 to register an interest in any property.