Abolish Chancel Repair Liability

Ah. It is change.org that is asking for a donation, not the NSS.

It's the beautiful old historical buildings that must be preserved. Nothing to do with the religion.

Bags have you no soul?

There is that, atqui – about the word secular putting some people off. Some people (quite a few, it would seem) don't understand what secularism is and equate it with atheism, not realising that one can be religious and a secularist at the same time, and many people are. Hey ho.

I couldn't find any request for a donation on the first petition you posted about. I'll go and have a more careful look.

Well yes, it is a secular issue, and what you have said is very true Bags ,but I could see that signing a petition presented by that society might put religious people off!!particularly as they asked for a donation .

In short, churches/religions have no right to impose costs on non-religious people, or even on people who are religious but of another faith than the one seeking to charge them building upkeep costs.

Unless a church is worth preserving for its historical and architectural value, in which case all tax-payers will support its upkeep, I don't care if they rot and fall down any more than I care if an old barn or house rots and falls down. Churches should not get special treatment just because they are churches.

free to follow...

Of course it's a secular issue! Secularism is just about separating church(es)/religions from all other public or state issues. It still leaves everyone to follow or ignore, and support financially, any religion they like at the same time as not asking people who choose no religion to support any religion or its buildings financially. Historically people had no choice. Now they should have a choice. Simple.

Jingl, it is not just people who live right near to churches who could be liable. A friend sold a house on an estate (built about 40 years ago) which is about 1.5 miles from our parish church and was told by the solicitor that there was a chancel repair liability and to advise the purchasers to take out insurance. Our friend had never realised that, so we all need to check if this relates to our properties and take out insurance.
Another friend found himself liable for the cost of rebuilding a stone storage shed which was the property of the church next door to him - he had no idea he was liable so it could not have shown up in searches when he bought the property years ago.

Must find out ....

epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/54504
Better?

I agree about the secular society I subsequently found an e petition that was not on the secular society Nelliemoser, and should have found another link for the petition which stood alone. A friend drew my attention to the petition and it just happened to be on the secular society website.

Nelliem I wondered why the Secular Society was involved, too.

Yes, Atqui I took out insurance when I bought a property and also had a Chancel Search done. More fees to fork out for when buying property! - but I wanted to be able to sleep at night

IMO This issue has got nothing to do with secularism and a everything to to do with basic fairness.

What has the secular society got to do with this? They appear to be jumping on a band wagon that has nothing to do at all with the actual issue of religion in society, in order to make a fuss about something to pursue their political goals.

Would they want all these buildings to collapse because they disapprove of religion. When campaigning about anything beware of who might join your side, they might "sup with the Devil"!

This is just one very old piece of legislation that needs reform.
It is not right to saddle unsuspecting people with that sort of debt, just because someone has an old house does not mean that they have enough assets to contribute to those sorts of costs.

I would hate to see these beautiful old churches collapse and become ruins. they are an important pat of our landscape and social history; whether or not you are a religious believer.
I am sure there are better ways of resolving these issues, the C of E is not that poor.

We have taken out insurance now, but when we first tried to do so it was quite difficult to find anyone who knew anything about it. However, it is such a ludicrous law in my opinion, that it needs to be abolished.

Yes. That is the same case as Atqui's link. Sounds like they don't even live at the farm, just "hobby farmers". Perhaps they should have said no thank you when it was handed down to them, or sold it straight away.

this could be a case in question

As the farm owner says, at the end of the article, that there are grants available, I wonder why they ran up such huge law bills in disputing it.

I have lived in two houses that had Chancel Repair Liability, before we bought we were advised by solicitor to buy Chancel Repair Insurance (a one off payment about £500 I think, but can't remember exact cost), we had no problem selling these house either.

What ....to the tune of 300,000???
www.chancelrepair.org/2.html

I can't help feeling that if someone is lucky enough to live near a beautiful old church, they shouldn't object to helping out with the cost of keeping it up. (The building that is)

There were cases in the recent past where a village of home owners were expected to pay thousands of pounds for church repairs because of the Chancel Repair Liability and they didn't have the money to pay. I can't remember the outcome, but I do remember that some of the home owners were in the situation of having to sell their homes if the Church didn't back down in its demands.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancel_repair_liability

Perhaps you could both fill us in?

No.