Talk to me about Chancel Repair Liability, please

[SuperBunny]

I am buying a house but was notified today that the property is at risk of carrying a liability to contribute towards the cost of repairs of the church (I have no idea where the church is). Is this a problem? Does it matter?

we had to do this on a house in devon. through our solicitor we took out an insurance policy, we paid a one off fee so that if the church ever did want a new roof we wouldn't be billed for it.
it's a bleedin' liberty.

Yes it potentially does matter. Hiostorically, houses in a village shared responsibility for maintaining the church so if a new roof/ lots of work was needed, the owners of those properties could be required to cough up. Get the insurance if you get the house.

Hmm, thanks. I can take out the insurance for a 1 off fee of £10 but it does state that the policy does not guarantee that you will be covered

Is this a reason not to purchase a house? Or should I just go ahead? Solicitors say the rules are changing and unless the church register an interest on the property in the next year, these rules won't be valid. But what if they DO register an interest?

Yes, get insurance. There was a story about a poor couple forced to pay £500,000 towards the repair of a medieval church here So, if your solicitor has said that there's the potential to have to contribute, then I'd certainly investigate further and insure as appropriate.

We had to too (although the church isn't even in our village ). It wasn't expensive and it was only a one off payment so we paid it.

Yup we had this too, although the previous owners paid for it for us.

This came up when we recently sold our house. Apparently it was liable for this (not that it came up as an issue when we bought the house 5 years ago). Our solicitor said that it's a very common issue.

Our buyers' solicitor was saying that we should pay for the insurance (I think it was going to be 50 quid or something). His view was that we should say that if they were worried about their liability then they should buy the insurance and see what they said. If they insisted, then he advised that we should just pay it. Fortunately they didn't insist and I should have thought they didn't get the insurance.

Our solicitor thought that there was no need to get the insurance anyway. He mentioned some court case and I'm sure he mentioned that couple RockinSocks mentions. He basically seemed to think it was a non-issue and that the local church was never going to ask local residents to contribute to any repairs to the church (most of the surrounding area was a council estate! including round our house which was ex-council!).

Get advice from your solicitor though about this particular house /area - that's what you are paying them for.

Very common in many towns - we have had it on the last 3 properties we've bought.
Usually it is a condition of the sale that the seller pays your insurance premium. about 45 quid I think ours was.

I would get it. It didn't come up for buying here but I was speaking to my dad about it and he is a church warden elsewhere and he said that if they had to raise money that they couldn't manage through extra fundraising activities they wouldn't think twice about using the chancel repair rights they have on the properties in the town. Made me think hard about it as I think my dad is a reasonable man!!

Thank you for all the responses. I will definitely get the insurance... I just wasn't sure how much of a problem this is. I would object very strongly to paying for repairs to the church.

I had this on a property we recently purchased, you can take out the insurance through your solicitor, however if you want to avoid the admin fee, I found a company called CLS where you can order direct through their website as a private consumer www.clsl.co.uk

As mentioned above by Jackstini ours was around £45 but there are varying options and different levels of cover.

When researching, I did find some cheap alternatives, however I think with these things you get what you pay for!