A recent House of Lords decision has effectively re-established the Church of England's right to enforce chancel repair liability, namely its ability to charge the cost of repairing the chancel of a parish church to residents or owners of property within the parish whose property or land carries chancel repair liability.

The decision has underlined the importance of identifying residual liability as part of the conveyance process, given the potential financial impact that such repair work could have on a liable household. Identifying chancel repair liability is complicated because there are numerous types of liability, often based on obscure laws or ancient property transactions that date to the medieval period, and are thus hard to identify. However, one type chancel repair liability - that of tithe rentcharge specified under the 1936 Tithe Act - can be checked in records deposited at The National Archives.

We will search the deposited records of ascertainment to ascertain whether the land or property in question has residual chancel repair liability, making copies of maps and supporting documentation as part of the process. Additional checks are run to assess the probability of other forms of liability with the parish, such as corn rent or glebe land liability, though no definitive statement can be made without reference to material deposited outside The National Archives. You will receive all relevant photocopies, plus a report outlining the sources consulted. The cost of this search is £125.

Please note
The provision of a report and copies of all relevant material are part of the research service, but the supply of such material does not equate to a legal opinion on the results of the search in question. In consequence Nick Barratt, House Detectives or Sticks Research Agency accepts no liability or consequence for any action or actions taken by the commissioning person or body as a result of the material found during the research.

With regard to chancel repairs searches, the search in question covers the Records of Ascertainment in the public domain, created under the terms of the 1936 Tithe Act to identify outstanding tithe rentcharge, and subsequently deposited at TNA. They do not deal with parishes where tithe rentcharge was never created, nor do they necessarily cover the whole liability in a parish. Notable instances are where all tithes in a parish were converted into corn rents; where the tithes in part of a parish were converted into corn rents and the rest were commuted into tithe rentcharges; where under an Enclosure Act lands were allotted in lieu of tithes; and where the tithes (rather than the tithe rentcharges) were merged in land under the Tithe Acts. Similarly there may be separate liability for rectorial glebe land that has passed into lay hands, and the search within the records at The National Archives does not cover such instances. You are therefore strongly advised to check with the relevant authority - in England this is the Diocesan Authority (which can be obtained from Crockford's Clerical Directory), and for Wales or Monmouth you should contact the Representative Body of the Church in Wales, 39 Cathedral Road, Cardiff. This enquiry can be undertaken on your behalf at an additional cost of £50.

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