Chancel Repairs

Baroness Wilcox Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Wilcox (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Avebury for bringing this subject to the attention of the Committee and thereby giving us all the opportunity to discuss a very important matter—chancel repair liability. In my role as chairman of the London Diocesan Advisory Committee and as an active member of my parish church in Cornwall, I see more of the varied picture that the Church of England presents than do most people. The views I have heard from the members and officers of the Church of England on the subject of chancel repair liability are equally varied. I speak now as an individual member of the church, not on behalf of any church body.

As we have heard from my noble friend Lord Avebury, this matter is one that can come between churches and their local communities, and it has long been understood that something must be done to remove the element of surprise from the situation. Those of us within the church had been resting on the assumption that something has been done. In 2002, Her Majesty’s Government brought the Land Registration Act on to the statute book, giving the church 10 years to get its house in order and register legitimate chancel repair liability, after which the door would shut in October 2013. That was the date that we all had in mind: October 2013. After that, it would be settled, with no more scope for nasty surprises—surprises for churches seeking grant funding that are coerced into researching historic liabilities, and, of course, surprises for the owners of properties affected by those liabilities.

There are two sides to every story, of course. In fact, many registered chancel repair liabilities are against wealthy institutions, the church authorities themselves or others who are well able to pay. Those landowners would no doubt be pleased to see the value of their asset rise as a result of the abolition of chancel repair liabilities. However, the worst-case scenario is more often quoted. An unsuspecting person of modest means buys an unassuming house only to discover, despite having taken all possible precautions, that they are liable for a bill of a quarter of a million pounds to mend the church roof. That nasty element of surprise is undoubtedly one of the worst aspects of the current state of affairs, but I wonder how often it actually occurs. I do not have the numbers, but I hope that my noble friend may have the list to hand when he replies to the questions which I and others are asking.

It was precisely that problem which Her Majesty’s Government sought to tackle in the Land Registration Act 2002. At least, that was the popular understanding among my church friends. I think that it is fair to say that in practice the law is not what we all hoped for, a view supported by the Law Society in its parliamentary briefing. Its principal limitation is that it applies only to properties sold since October 2013. All property which has not been sold since October 2013 continues to dwell under a cloud of uncertainty. Even worse, the point of sale being the completion of the sale means that, at least in theory, it is possible to discover and register a new chancel repair liability between exchange of contracts and completion. That means that even when a property search has been returned blank, there remains a risk. Unsurprisingly, the insurance industry has risen to the challenge, and chancel repair liability insurance remains a lucrative business. In practice, the 2002 Act has not met the needs of churches, landowners or potential purchasers.

To my mind, the neatest, fairest and best solution to all this is to bring forward a law to fulfil what we hoped was the ambition behind the 2002 Act: to remove uncertainty and any further possibility of nasty surprises. However, to abolish chancel repair liability altogether without compensation to the churches concerned would not send the right message to the volunteers struggling to maintain our church heritage.

I do not dispute that the present Government have been generous in their funding for church buildings, but in the European context, where many countries’ churches are funded largely by the state to the tune of billions, we get extremely good value for money. The volunteers of the Church of England care for 12,500 listed buildings—more than 10 times as many as the National Trust and English Heritage combined. While churches can apply to certain grant funding pots, there is no guaranteed state funding at all for this substantial part of our national heritage.

While grand country houses and ruined castles are, at best, noble works of art and, at worst, symbols of local oppression, our historic churches represent the very best hopes and aspirations of the communities that built them, celebrated their lives in them, and were ultimately called to that final act of parish communion in their churchyards. In seeking to legislate further to end the undoubted unfairness of the present system of chancel repair liabilities, I urge the Minister to ensure that hard-pressed individual congregations tasked with caring for this very significant part of our heritage are not put at a disadvantage as a result.