Chancel Repair Liability

cabbage

Hi

my daughter is about to buy a house. The Chancel Policy is £14.80 which is cheaper than the Chancel Search fee. I've worked as a legal secretary in early 2000 until 2003 and never come across this. For £14.80 its worth taking out the policy to protect against liability

[Deleted User]

Cabbage, do you know which insurance provider that policy is with? I was told it would cost around £70!

bouicca21

The standard chancel repair search by a commercial company does not identify liability it simply identifies that the parish concerned appears in an index of documents held at the National Archives. For guidance see here.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/research-guides/chancel-repairs.htm
Appearing in the index is no clue to what the document contains - most of them actually say no liability.

It's easy to buy a copy of the relevant document fro TNA and that would tell you whether a more intense search is required.

The buyer's conveyancers told me there was a chancel repair liability when I sold my mum's house. Actually I knew that any chancel repair liablity on that particular parish had been extinguished in 1812 when the parish was enclosed by Act of Palriament. Working back through the paperwork from the chancel repair company I could see how carefully worded the search result was - easy to interpret as 'there is a liability on every property in the parish' but actually it only said there might be a liability on this property. Sure enough the parish occurs in that index. And sure enough when I bought a copy of the document from the National Archives it said no liability.

There are some areas of the country (Staffordshire if I remember correctly) where there is a problem; in most areas it isn't.

People have got their knickers in a twist over the Aston Cantlow case where the liability was clearly on the deeds and the owners knew that. They chose to challenge the demand and take the case to court so their original bill from the CofE for a few thousand turned into about £100K for legal fees.

tim123456789

yorkshire_terrier_owner wrote: »

I'm completing on my purchase tomorrow and I've had to take out the insurance as my lender has said they require it. The chancel check has shown that the property I am purchasing is within an area that the church could call on to pay for repairs. Cost me £60 for 25 years cover which is transferable to a new owner if I sell in the future.

What i find odd about these transferable policies, is that vendors never have them :rotfl:

tim

Tenyearstogo

[Deleted User] wrote:

How do you know the solicitor isn't a woman?

His beard.

G_M

Tenyearstogo wrote: »

His beard.

That's no guarantee....

G_M

[Deleted User] wrote:

I only highlighted the use of pronouns because I think it's interesting that when people talk about a solicitor, that person is assumed to be male unless otherwise stated.

That is one HUGE (and false) assumption!

I use 'him', not because I assume a solicitor to be male (unless otherwise stated) but as a linguistic convenience.

* as neverdespairgirl says ""him/her" is just clumsy, and "them" grammatically inaccurate."
* 'he'/'him' has been historically used for ... yes.... centuries to encompass both genders. It is a well-understood use of language.

Now if you were arguing that the continued use of this historical linguistic convenience helped perpetuate sexist attitudes, you might have a point, but I'd still think you were focussing on the wrong target.

I suppose 'manpower' is also on your list?

It's as absurd as the banning of the use of the word 'blackboard'.........

ValHaller

[Deleted User] wrote:

How do you know the solicitor isn't a woman?

Look what a waste of space that comment has generated. The solicitor's gender is not relevant to Dan-Dan's comment. It is as NDgirl implies, a limitation of our language. Take it up on a language forum or discussion, please.

If you wanted to demonstrate that the issue of gender pronouns was too trivial to be bothered with, I couldn't think of a better way than derailing a serious discussion on something else by injecting the topic.

cabbage

[Deleted User] wrote:

Cabbage, do you know which insurance provider that policy is with? I was told it would cost around £70!

Sorry I'm not sure. The solicitors tel number is01773 599 929 if you want to ring them

norabarnacle

A lot of people on here seem to be saying £xx for peace of mind is worth it but what if everyone who has taken this insurance didn't need it but did so because it was too expensive/time consuming/complicated to find out - the insurance companies are quids in! The principle of the thing is what gets me.

Our solicitor (who is a woman) has explained why she can't say if there is a liability and that explanation seems reasonable so it's a case of us deciding whether to take a risk or not.

I think it's only £25 one off fee so in the grand scheme of things a drop in the ocean. We live in a densely populated area of Blackpool...I just can't see us ever being asked to pay for the repair of the chancel....mmmm got some thinking to do.