Chancel Repair Liability
If you have an ancient parish church, or a church built on an old site, it is possible that a person or body other than the PCC has responsibility for paying for the repairs to the chancel, at least in part.
Many PCC's benefit from the fact that this responsibility -
called Chancel Repair Liability or CRL - applies to their church.
Every PCC is advised to check whether it does.
These notes are an introduction to help you plan any action you
should take. Changes in the law mean that you only have until 2013
to secure some kinds of CRL for the future.
Historically, the owner of certain land in a Parish had the
legal responsibility to maintain the Chancel of the Parish Church.
That is the part of the Church, usually at the East end, where the
altar stands in the sanctuary, and the choir pews traditionally are
located.
Over the centuries the law has evolved and changed: the liability
may continue to be attached to land and in other instances it is no
longer attached to the ownership of land.
The law is changing with regard to chancel repair liability. The
Land Registration Act 2002 has important implications for those
churches where there is a lay rector responsible for paying the
repairs to the chancel (or a proportion of them).
The change in the law requires that chancel repair liabilities
which are attached to land are registered at the Land Registry
before 2013. Resources available to assist clergy, churchwardens
and PCC's include these listed below and are all available to
download.
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Letter sent July 2010 to parish clergy and churchwardens in the Diocese of York from the Archdeacons of York, Cleveland and the East Riding and the Diocesan Registrar.
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Notes of Guidance (July 2010, Minor Revision October 2011) issued by the Diocesan Registrar.
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Slides telling more about CRL and including a brief explanation of the historical basis of CRL
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Chancel Repair Liability (CRL) - A Step by Step Guide to registering CRL at Land Registry (written by Chris Chambers)
Your Archdeacon or the Registrar
The lay rector may be a private person(s), or an institution eg
the Church Commissioners or an Oxbridge College or a combination of
persons and institutions. Depending on the particular type and
origin of the chancel repair liability, some of that liability may
have been transferred (by legislation) to the PCC.
Every church does not have a lay rector but many do.
If your church building (or any part of it, or the site) dates from
before 1840, then you need to consider now the matter of chancel
repair liability.
If your church was built after 1840 on land on which a church has
not been previously built, then your church will not have a lay
rector. In these cases the PCC need not concern themselves now with
chancel repair liability. However, please do exercise caution in
considering the age of your church: many churches have been built
and rebuilt several times over and it is often not possible to
identify a single date when the church was built.
If your church may have a lay rector, then parish clergy and
churchwardens are encouraged to download and read the resource
material listed above (if they have not already done so).
The change in the law does not affect chancel repair liability
which is not attached to land. Such a liability does not need to be
registered under the 2002 Act, and it will continue unless and
until a Government repeals chancel repair liability.