What Is Chancel Repair Liability? How Does It Affect My Property?

A chancel repair liability is the requirement for an owner of land to pay for the repair of the chancel (the part of the church containing the altar and the choir) of an Anglican parish church. Where previously the local rector owned land in the parish, he was responsible for repairing the chancel of the church out of the money the land produced. Monasteries often acquired this land together with the responsibility for paying for the repair of the chancel. When Henry Vlll sold the monasteries' land, the liability to pay for the repair of the chancel remained with the land sold. That's the history out of the way!

How does this affect me?

If your property (residential or commercial) is within the vicinity of a church and subject to chancel repair liability then you could be required to pay significant amounts of money towards the repair of the chancel. Chancel repair liability is currently an "overriding interest", which means that even if it is not protected at the Land Registry it will nevertheless bind any person who acquires an interest in the land. From midnight on 12 October 2013, chancel repair liability, and some of the more obscure classes of property rights, lose status as an overriding interest. Once the status of the right to claim chancel repair liability is lost, if the right is not protected by an entry in the register, a "purchaser" of the land will be able to take free from it. The rights affected include franchises, manorial rights, and sporting rights as well as chancel repairs. These rights have generally not appeared on the registered title to properties unless they were specifically referred to in registered title documents.

Land Registry stats

The Land Registry estimates that about five thousand parishes in England and Wales could be affected by chancel repair liability. The idea of registering these ancient rights is to bring greater transparency to land ownership and make registered property titles as informative as possible. Up until now, concerned property owners and / or...

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