Archaic tax may be answer to Church of England’s repair bill prayers

The growing repair bill faced by the Church of England has an answer when its accountants consider how to keep the rain from damaging ancient parish churches.

Extra funds can be found from a charge on local residents known as the chancel repairs liability that affects as many as 40% of England’s homes. This archaic rule, which dates back to Henry VIII’s reign and his dissolution of the monasteries, makes homeowners in about 5,200 parishes liable to pay for repairs to a church’s chancel: the area including the altar, the choir stalls and the roof protecting them.

In 2008, one couple in the West Midlands was forced to pay more than £200,000 towards the upkeep of their parish church after an appeal to the House of Lords failed.

Before Henry VIII sold off the monasteries in what was one of Britain’s first large-scale privatisations, parishioners paid a tithe for church repairs when they were overseen by a rector. The dissolution shifted this responsibility to the new owners of local land.

Several governments have attempted to make the situation clearer and in the last parliament church councils were told to notify the Land Registry of their intentions or abandon their claim.

However, the confusion has continued and homebuyers in areas known to be in or near an affected parish are commonly charged between £20 and £30 to pay for a one-off insurance charge to cover them against their local church officials demanding cash for repairs.

Solicitors can examine Land Registry records to try to determine the likelihood of the home being affected, but the cost is usually more than £30 and cannot be conclusive.

The confusion, and bad publicity surrounding the House of Lords case, which left the couple bankrupt and forced the sale of their farm, has also left churches reluctant to pursue cases, appearing to make the only winners the small band of insurers selling chancel repair cover.