The Government has announced that it has no intention of changing the law on chancel repair liability – leaving tens of thousands of home-owners with houses that are potentially unsaleable.

Residents, most of them elderly, of the parish of St Eadburgha in Gloucestershire had a nasty shock recently, when a letter from the Land Registry dropped through the door telling them that, because of the land on which their house was built, they had a potential legal liability to pay tens of thousands of pounds in church repairs.