Chancel Repair Liability

History and Background

This is piece of largely forgotten history come back to haunt us. Following a House of Lords ruling, the law has been changed, which hopefully will result in the eventual dying away of some ancient rights, but will still cause a problem for the next few years.

There was a famous case recently, (Aston Cantlow v Wallbank), where the Church sought payment from the owners of the rectorial land (it was part of a property called Glebe Farm) to repair the chancel of the local mediaeval Church. The owners of the rectorial land (known as lay rectors) refused to pay and what was originally a £6,000 bill increased to £96,000 as the structure slowly disintegrated. In the end the landowners were faced with a hefty legal bill after the case had gone right through to the House of Lords. 

Such obligations stem from mediaeval times where land, previously owned by the Church to fund the local rector, had been sold and the new owner took on the repairing obligation attached to that land.  The church is not necessarily the local parish church as it is the medieval parish that is being considered here and many modern parishes were not constituted until the nineteenth or twentieth centuries.  The penalty is financial in that it involves having to pay for the upkeep and repair of the chancel of the local mediaeval parish church.  The liability affects some land in some medieval parishes.

As a reaction to this case, provisions were included in the Land Registration Act 2002, which gave Church Councils up to 13th October 2013 to register any rights they considered they had.  The buyers of any property sold after that date where the right had not been registered at the Land Registry would be free of any liability for the future.   The Government could have taken the opportunity to remove these ancient rights completely, but did not do so, so we are stuck with an unsatisfactory situation that is explained below.

Present Practice

We now effectively have to carry out a Chancel Check (costing £10-£15 plus VAT) to reveal whether or not the property you are proposing to purchase may be affected by a potential “Chancel Repair” obligation to the local Parish Church.    This simply tells us whether the property is within a parish or part of a parish where there is some property with the liability.   If there is no possible liability the matter does not have to be taken any further.  If there is a risk in that some property in that area is affected then basic insurance for most properties to protect a buyer and his mortgage lenders for the next 25 years costs £50-£60 in most cases.  Protection for successive owners, or in perpetuity, is a little more expensive.

It has always been possible (at a cost of at least £100, if not more) to have a full search carried out in the National Archives to determine whether a particular piece of land is affected in this way. If this produces a result showing the property is not affected then nothing more needs to be done. However, if the result is adverse and shows potential liability for that property, then two nasty results follow:

  • Insurance becomes dramatically more expensive - higher three figure or even four figure sums; and
  • We have an obligation to register the liability against the title at the Land Registry.

It is therefore fairly obvious that it is not a good idea to do the full search.  In most cases the Chancel Check Search plus the insurance costs less than a full search. 

Isn't the risk so small it's worth ignoring?

Possibly! The trouble is the law has been changed fairly recently and it would only take a concerted campaign by some Churches to register their rights for some property owners to have serious problems selling their property. The mere existence of a registered right is quite likely to put off a potential buyer. So far, we haven't heard of such a campaign, but the situation could change. We have even heard of the opposite. In one or two places in Somerset, the Church Councils have renounced any such rights they may have!

If you are not having a mortgage on the property you are buying, then you can choose to take the risk.   However, if there is a mortgage, we have little choice but to arrange the insurance.   Asking your lender if it is really concerned about the point is unlikely  to produce a quick or sensible answer because of  Lender Bureaucracy and therefore if the seller will not pay for the indemnity insurance, (and they often won't, although logically they should), the bottom line is to pay for it or face further delays.

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