Petition to abolish Chancel repair liability

Rollinghills

Forget chancel liability, we'll pay 30 quid for insurance and out of sight out of mind. But we are moving to an area where due to some medieval law or something (haven't looked at the legal basis of it) the council are charging us 33 pounds A YEAR for the church (less for lower tax bands, min 13 pounds). Added on top of council tax so no way out! Now how do we go about abolishing that!!!

Green3

jamesd wrote: »

There was no reason for it to show up in the deeds in 2003. It's unlikely that they would have any idea if it applies. Because the property has not been sold since 2013 a check by you at the Land registry will not reveal whether there is liability.

If a check at the Land Registry does not reveal whether there is a liability, then what is the buyer supposed to do to confirm that no liability has been registered? Also, if the seller refuses to answer whether there is a liability.
Also if the seller has a very important role in the church, would he not definitely know whether a liability has been registered? So his refusal to answer seems scary. Would you walk away?

jamesd

A search when the last sale was at that date cannot be relied upon to reveal liability because there was no requirement to register the liability at that time. For sales since 2013 there is a need to register a liability. Buy a property that was previously sold from 2013 onwards then no registry entry means no liability.

Liability for older sales doesn't depend on registration. It depends on records of chancel liability that are hundreds of years old relating to which former landowners were obliged to pay it, which have in turn been complicated by centuries of property sales. The imprecision in searches of such vague areas is why a common result of a check for liability is "maybe" and a solicitor may then to be very cautious say "buy the insurance".

The seller may not know if there is liability. A person with a very important role in the church may not know if there is liability unless they go and check the records.

I wouldn't walk away unless I had reason to believe that there was liability or knew it was a high risk location. Typical city sites aren't high risk.

jjlandlord

The hypocrisy, of course, is that a church enforcing chancel repair liability would be acting in an obviously un-Christian way...