Chancel repair liability

VKay

Hello,
My solicitor informs me the house we are buying requires indemnity insurance as its'within a parish which continues to have a potential chancel repair liability'. i believe this isn't uncommon.

She states 'our charges for arranging the policy are £60 plus VAT plus cost of premium' . My question is -what will the premium be??!- and also, do i have to do this through my solicitor or can i arrange the insurance myself? I don't want to pay £70 to arrange a policy if i can do it - legally- myself!! Help!

edited=ok just rung Chancel check- they say i can arrange it myself but i would need to know a 'level of cover' to choose. Am I being foolish considering doing this myself to save £70/ Should I just let the solicitor do it?

paulsin

No not at all. i recently had this situation and decided against the insurance. Check with the vedor to see if the insurance is already in place. You can buy it for 25 years plus. It is not much money, if you search on the net it ranges from abou £40-£250 ish (this is from memory so could be wrong). Also you can do the search yourself to find out if your in a chancel area, so don;t let you solicitor rip you off with the search, as it sounds like they are. £15 is normally right, but you can check on chancel check website.

Things you need to consider are:

- 99% of houses in the UK are in an area of potential chancel liability.
- This ancient law needs to be enforced by the church, which is highly unlikely. Most churches rely on donations from their parishoners, they wouldn't risk p***ing them off.
- Even if the church does enforce it the number of houses in the area will reduce any potenital costs as it spread between the houses
- Ignore all the news stories you read. Its nonsense. The 100'000's they quote is 80% legal fees, from trying to fight it. The main story they quote was for a charge that was made to one property, which had histroically paid for the church. It was not a home they had purchased.

It bascially comes down to whether you are willing to risk it for the small outlay, however I think you'll find that if you check the chancel area for which the house relates (took me awhile but search on net and you should find it), estimate number of houses, divide potential £100,000 bill and see the cost. If may only amount the the cost of the premium.

Side note. If you decide to get the insurance, tell your solicitor you want the vendor to buy it. They won;t risk losing the sale for £40 or so. When buying our house (which we pulled out of in end) our solicitor automatically requested the vendor to pay it.

Hope this helps.

Robert_Sterling_3

"Most churches rely on donations from their parishoners, they wouldn't risk p***ing them off."

Crude but true.

Jelliebeen

We took out a chancel repair insurance policy via our solictors for £10 just a month or so ago, £60 seems a bit steep to me. But if that's your only option and you can't find cheaper, I'd recommend paying it as you don't want to end up forking out way over that if the church come knocking!

poppysarah

Robert_Sterling wrote: »

"Most churches rely on donations from their parishoners, they wouldn't risk p***ing them off."

Crude but true.

Hands up if you go to church.
It's a tiny % of people who do - so I imagine skint churches will look at all options...

Richard_Webster

- 99% of houses in the UK are in an area of potential chancel liability.

About one third of the medieval parishes had this liability somewhere in their area.

- This ancient law needs to be enforced by the church, which is highly unlikely. Most churches rely on donations from their parishoners, they wouldn't risk p***ing them off.

Its probably true that most parochial church councils won't want to enforce it but if the Archdeacon or whoever tells them they have to, because otherwise the chancel roof will fall in and there's no other source of funds, then some might reluctantly do so.

- Even if the church does enforce it the number of houses in the area will reduce any potential costs as it spread between the houses

Trouble is that they could choose a few people who were easy to get hold of and seek to collect all the money from them and leave them to try to recover shares from all the others, and that would be interesting (and very expensive)!

Side note. If you decide to get the insurance, tell your solicitor you want the vendor to buy it. They won;t risk losing the sale for £40 or so. When buying our house (which we pulled out of in end) our solicitor automatically requested the vendor to pay it.

Two points:
1. Even if you aren't bothered about the insurance your solicitor may feel that he has to have it arranged to protect any mortgage lender.
2. I used to always ask the other side to pay for the insurance (see below why I don't bother any longer), but in most cases they would not do so, so I would say to the client that unless they wanted to spend a week or two on a probably fruitless exchange of letters/e-mails arguing about why the seller should pay for it, it would be easier if they did so. Most buyers would say it is a pain, but not worth arguing over £60.

We took out a chancel repair insurance policy via our solictors for £10 just a month or so ago, £60 seems a bit steep to me.

Some solicitors like my practice now have the facility to arrange 25 year cover for £10 and perpetual cover for £15, so it isn't worth even doing the search - just insure all cases, apart from cash purchasers who want to take the risk. So it is typically a one-off £10 for all purchasers instead of £11.50 for the Chancel Check search and then another £59.85 if there is a potential liablity. Not many solicitors have this facility so worth asking about when checking estimates, because that way you can often save about £60 on your overall bill.

VKay

Richard,

Can i arrange this insurance myself? I am happy to pay the £59.85 insurance but feel aggrieved about paying £69 for my solicitor to do it for me if it's just a case of ringing and arranging myself- I'm not an idiot- i can pick up the phone!! However, is there a REASON why i should arrange it through my solicitor?

Thanks for your help everyone!

Richard_Webster

You can try contacting Chancel Check: http://www.clsl.co.uk The £59.88 policy is for 25 years (not protecting successors in title) for cover of up to £250,000.

The problem is that because these policies are specialist, most indemnity insurers don't want the general public dealing with them because they would spend too much time explaining what it is all about and it is not cost effective as most of the cost in the policy is in the admin in setting it up. So you might find that they won't let you register with them to get a policy. Neverthless it is worth trying - phone them and see!

I'm afraid there is extra work in arranging a policy, but it is such a frequent occurrence that it is almost standard that some kind of policy will be needed on each case. £60 for arranging was probably in the solicitor's terms of business somewhere and they probably got you to sign to say you had read them. If not, you could try challenging the sum. I don't charge for this because I would spend too much time explaining to the clients why I am charging them!

rogerdodger007

Why not speak to the vendors (or their neighbours) and ask what level of cover they have and who the insurers are?

VKay

Thanks so much- really appreciate your help.

Richard_Webster

Why not speak to the vendors (or their neighbours) and ask what level of cover they have and who the insurers are?

Unless they bought very recently the sellers won't have any cover and won't know what OP is talking about!

It is only since the Land Registration Act 2002 came into force in October 2003 that the issue has become more of a live one, because of the deadline to register these rights against titles by 13 October 2013. Anything not registered by then will be unenforceable against anyone who buys a property with no registration against it after that date.