Chancel liability

jeanzbeanz

Hi all, hope someone can help me. We are in the process of buying a house :www: (hoping to exchange later this month ) and have just been advised by our conveyancing solicitor as follows:

"The result of our chancel search reveals that the property has a potential chancel liability based upon historical records. We recommend that you obtain an indemnity policy for this liability."

She has sent us a quote for £80ish for the indemnity policy. In the grand scheme of things I would rather protect myself from any unknown liabilities and pay £80 ... but is there really any chance of a church sending us a bill?! And how can I find out myself which church it is?

Probably being thick but this is all new to me and I have done a bit of googling and am both shocked at the horror stories out there and still a bit confused as to what it actually means!

G_M

Did you instruct the solicitor to do a chancel search? Why? How much did the search cost?

Cheaper just to buy the insurance from the start!

bouicca21

This kind of search merely means that there is a document about the parish in The National Archives. This may or may not say that there is a liability; if there is it will indicate which particular area of the parish is liable - it won't be all of it.

When I sold my mum's house the searches came back with this 'there might be a liability' stuff. If you read it very carefully you will see that these results are written very very carefully - they don't say there is a liability but imply there is. In the case of my mum's house it took very little effort to find that all liabilities in that parish had been extinguished in 1812. The chancel repair search identified the existence of a document, it did not identify what that document said - which was that there was no liability.

These indemnity policies are sold on the back of fears about a huge bill in a notorious case. The huge bills didn't even relate to the chancel repair but to the legal costs incurred by the plaintiffs who knew perfectly well their land was burdened with a liability because it was written on their deeds.

It will cost you less than a fiver to download and read the document about your parish (it has to be the ancient parish).

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/chancel-repair-liabilities-england-wales/

TBagpuss

It's complicated but yes, it could happen.

The real horror case involved a couple whose property was the only one which was liable, so they were hit with the whole of the bill for the repairs. In areas where there are more houses affected, the individual bill per property could be much lower, but you haven't any way of knowing in advance what the cost might be.

jeanzbeanz

Thank you all so much for your replies, that helps make it clearer.

Our solicitor told us that they would do the search along with all the other searches they do (e.g. an environmental search which has ascertained that HS2 will be in the area of that local authority...if it ever happens...!) and because of the result of a "potential" liability they recommend we take out an indemnity policy.

@bouicca21 - I will have a look at the national archives, thank you very much for your detailed explanation.

Hoploz

I thought there was some sort of change in 2013 that got rid of all this chancel repair stuff from house buying. Can someone else remember more about it??

Hoploz

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/parochial-church-councils-and-chancel-repair-liability/parochial-church-councils-and-chancel-repair-liability

I've skip read this and it looks like parishes had to register if they still wanted to use this system ... Or something ... So there must be a list which states for sure whether the property would be liable???

C_Mababejive

It is hard to believe the anceint powers the the church once wielded and that they would have people ruined and made homeless

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1094403/Pay-500-000-God-help-say-couple-forced-medieval-law-foot-church-repairs.html

jeanzbeanz

I've just emailed the solicitor to ask if there is any way we can find out for certain whether the property could be subject to a chancel charge. I can't fine any way to do it myself. This "potential liability" stuff doesn't fill me with confidence - seems like a bit of a scam!!

kinger101

Hoploz wrote: »

I thought there was some sort of change in 2013 that got rid of all this chancel repair stuff from house buying. Can someone else remember more about it??

Apparently the bill only got as far as first reading. Guess it wasn't a priority.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancel_repair_liability

tim123456789

kinger101 wrote: »

Apparently the bill only got as far as first reading. Guess it wasn't a priority.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancel_repair_liability

That was a proposal to abolish it completely

the law referred to above, to require registration, did go through