(Axis Magazine ~ Legal Advice Feature)
Joanna Peters, solicitor in the residential conveyancing department of Vanderpump & Sykes, explains why some property owners in England are liable for (church) chancel repairs.

How can a home owner, you may ask, be responsible for the repairs to a chancel?

In order to ascertain whether your property has such a burden, we as conveyancers carry out a 'chancel check' in order to find out whether the property you are purchasing has a potential liability and how severe it may be. The majority of time there is always a potential risk and we advise clients to obtain an indemnity policy on completion to cover any potential risk in the future. This is almost always a condition of a mortgage offer by a lender.

The amount of your potential contribution to a chancel repair could be very expensive and even more should you fight it.

The case that put conveyancers on 'red alert' in 2003 was that of Mr and Mrs Wallbank's refusal to pay their demand of £95,000 received from the Parochial Church Council of Aston Cantlow. The case even reached the House of Lords and they were forced to pay £200,000 plus expenses incurred by the Church due to the amount of time the case took.

There is no easy way in finding out whether a property is likely to have a potential chancel repair liability. As a highlight to conveyancers, investigating titles for clients who are purchasing, houses with names of an ecclesiastical nature or situated in a street called "Glebe" or "Tithe" may be a warning that the land is indeed considered part of the historical parish.

If you are selling your property we may discover during the transaction process that your home is liable for chancel repair, even though you have never received such a demand. Your buyer may insist on you paying for indemnity insurance in order to continue with the matter. There is no hard and fast rule and many clients refuse to pay, as they have never received notice for payment throughout their period of ownership. What I would advise is that once sold, the property liability leaves you and passes to your buyer and indemnity policies are relatively cheap. Often the costs of such policies are shared between the buyers and sellers as a gesture of goodwill.

This is not a straightforward matter, however, we hope that this will all be tidied up for purchasers by October 2013. This is the deadline set to register chancel interests with the Land Registry. After this time, all liabilities will be available in the records held by the Land Registry and we will be able to advise you on it. We can assume that if unregistered by the deadline, any demands of new owners by Churches will be invalid and unenforceable.

As this liability seems ancient and outdated by many, not all Churches are registering their rights. They have taken the view that it would be unfair to place such an obligation on their local residents and this is welcomed news.