Problems found after you bought · Chancel repair liability
When I bought this property, I didn’t know Chancel repair liability could hold up a sale or a remortgage. Now I’m stuck.
Would you have bought the property if you had known?
If you had known about the chancel repair liability before you committed, and understood the problems it could cause when you later came to sell or remortgage, would it have changed your decision?
- Would you have paid the same price?
- Would you have wanted it investigated first?
- Would you have walked away?
If knowing about the problem might have changed what you did, the next question is obvious.
Did you receive the right advice when you bought?
You may not know the answer yet. But if nobody explained the problem, or you are now questioning what you were told at the time, that is worth looking at.
You don’t need to know whether anyone was at fault. Tell us what happened and when you bought. We’ll talk it through with you.
Why chancel repair liability can hold up a sale or remortgage
Chancel repair liability is one of the oddest things that can attach to a property. Some land carries an ancient obligation to contribute to repairing the chancel of a parish church, the part around the altar. It comes with the land, and can be open-ended. It has nothing to do with the house, or with religion, or with anything you did.
A sale or remortgage can be held up without anyone having made a demand. It is enough that the possibility has been raised and cannot be ruled out: a search may report the property as potentially affected, or an entry may appear on the title. On a sale, the buyer’s solicitor will consider what has been found when advising the buyer and complying with any lender requirements that apply. On a remortgage, your conveyancer considers the proposed lender’s requirements. Requirements differ between lenders.
One date can be particularly important: 13 October 2013. In broad terms, someone who bought registered property for value after that date may have taken free of a chancel repair right if it was not protected on the register when the purchase was registered. That does not resolve every case, so the title history and the nature of the transaction still need to be checked.
How the problem usually surfaces
A search flags the property
A search carried out for your buyer reports the property as potentially affected. That is a flag about the land, not a finding that anything is owed.
An entry on the register
An entry has been made to protect a claimed chancel repair right. The buyer’s conveyancer must address it, although the entry does not by itself prove the liability is valid.
A policy that does not carry over
A policy was taken out when you or an earlier owner bought, but it may not extend to your buyer or to their lender.
A remortgage title check
Nothing at the property has changed. The title and searches are examined again, against a different lender’s written requirements.
An approach about repairs
Contact is made about contributing to church repairs, which turns a theoretical question into a live one.
What you can do about it now
Establish whether the property is actually affected before doing anything else. Ask your conveyancer to check the title entries, the searches already carried out, and what the position is given when the property last changed hands. A flag on a search is not a liability.
Do not contact the parish, the church or the diocese to ask. An enquiry can draw attention to the property and may affect whether insurance is available. Check first whether a policy already exists, perhaps taken out on your own purchase, and whether it extends to a buyer and their lender.
Where chancel repair indemnity insurance is available, it covers the financial loss defined in its terms. It does not establish that the property is unaffected, and is not automatically sufficient for every lender.
If you are selling, your conveyancer can ask the buyer’s solicitor what remains unresolved and whether it arises from the buyer’s lender’s requirements. If you are remortgaging, your conveyancer can check your proposed lender’s requirements directly.
What happened when you bought?
The historical right itself will not normally have arisen after you bought. But whether it continued to bind the property can depend on what appeared on the register, when you bought and how the property was transferred. The questions are whether a search was carried out, what it said, whether a policy was taken out, and whether any of it was explained to you before you committed to buy.
Several records from the time may matter, and some may survive. There may be a search result showing what was reported about the property. The register as it stood shows what was recorded against the title. There may be a policy taken out on your purchase, which is worth finding before paying for another. The replies your conveyancer received may show what was asked. Your report on title may show what you were told. The conveyancing file draws those strands together. The lender’s historical written instructions may also be difficult to recover, because they are revised regularly and superseded versions disappear from public view.
Was this property really mortgageable when you bought?
Getting a mortgage when you bought does not necessarily tell you how readily mortgageable the property was across the wider market. There are two historical questions worth asking.
What did your own lender’s written requirements say about chancel repair liability when you bought? And what express requirements did other lenders have recorded at the same time?
Lenders’ written requirements were not necessarily uniform, and their wording changed over time. That means both which lender you used and when you bought can matter.
Lenders set out in writing what they expect a conveyancer to do about particular features of a property. Those instructions are revised regularly, and superseded versions drop out of public view, which can make a question as simple as what was my conveyancer told about chancel repair liability in the year I bought? surprisingly difficult to answer from the sources available today. Lexsure has retained historical lender-specific conveyancing requirements since April 2007, so where the records permit they can help reconstruct what your lender’s requirements said at the time and how that compared with the wider lending market.
The wider picture
Historical lender requirements can help us understand how mortgageable the property was when you bought. The conveyancing file and the advice given to you also matter.
Lexsure holds historical Report on Title material: the reports conveyancers sent to homebuyers, going back years. That material shows the kinds of chancel repair issues that were being addressed when firms reported to buyers, and it is a second and separate record from what lenders required.
Whether a chancel search was done
Was a chancel repair search obtained, what type of search was it, and were you told what it could, and could not, establish about your particular property?
Whether an indemnity policy was arranged
Was a chancel repair liability indemnity policy put in place, and was it arranged alongside a search, or instead of one?
What the indemnity policy covered
Were the exclusions in the chancel indemnity policy explained, and were you told the level of cover may need to match the price if you later sell?
Whether you were told not to contact the church
Were you warned that approaching a parish or diocese directly can limit the availability of chancel repair indemnity insurance?
Whether the effect on selling was explained
Were you told that chancel repair risk, or the level of any indemnity policy, could be raised again on a future sale, and could matter to a buyer’s lender?
These are examples of issues addressed in historical conveyancing material, not a checklist of what every purchaser should have been told, and not a measure of how often anything was addressed. What mattered in an individual purchase depended on the circumstances and on what was known at the time.
So even if your mortgage completed, or there is nothing unusual in your lender’s historical requirements, it can still be worth talking to us about what happened.
Could this problem have been seen coming?
The relevant starting point is what was known, or could reasonably have been identified, when you bought.
What did the register show? What did the searches report? What was in the conveyancing file? What were mortgage lenders requiring at the time? What kinds of chancel repair issues were conveyancing firms addressing with homebuyers? And what were you actually told?
Taken together, that can help build a picture of whether the problem you are facing today was already something that should have been considered when you bought.
Did you receive the right advice?
What the historical evidence can tell us
Where the relevant lender and period are covered, we may be able to establish what that lender’s conveyancing requirements said when you bought, and how that compared with the wider record at the time.
- That does not by itself establish that anyone was negligent, or that you have a claim. Those questions need the original file and legal advice.
- The absence of express wording does not establish that the lender accepted the issue.
- What your conveyancer had to tell your lender and what they had to tell you are different questions, and the second depends on the retainer and the circumstances.
Time limits apply, and in some cases the date on which you first knew enough about the problem matters as well as the date you bought, which is why we ask about both. Our full methodology, including how we treat gaps in the record, is set out in the archive and its limits. Where a solicitor later needs formal historical evidence, Lexsure can provide source-evidenced historical lender information.
Sources and review
This page is about potential chancel repair liability affecting a property. Guidance here about the present problem is general information. It is not legal advice about your property.
Information concerning how chancel repair liability affects registered land, including the 13 October 2013 date on which it lost automatic protection, has been checked against HM Land Registry Practice Guide 66: overriding interests losing automatic protection in 2013. The legal position and statutory dates must be reverified at each review.
Historical lender information is drawn from Lexsure’s archive of lender-specific conveyancing requirements, maintained since April 2007. Figures on this page state the population they are drawn from.
What the archive holds
Counts cover substantive changes to lenders' specific requirements in the UK Finance Handbook and elsewhere, covering issues such as chancel repair liability. That requirements changed is a fact about the market, not about your purchase.