The defendants argued that their liability was limited to keeping the chancel ‘wind and watertight’, relying on a statement on a website, www.churchlaw.co.uk. The Court expressly rejected that as a correct proposition of law, stating that the liability had to be assessed using the test propounded in Wise v Metcalfe (1829) 10B&C 299 and Pell v Addison (1862) F&F 291. The matter was put beyond doubt by section 2 of the Chancel Repairs Act 1932. The Court rejected the defendants' arguments that the claimant was asking for a ‘Rolls Royce job’, that the Church ought ‘to act in accordance with its own teaching and temper the wind to the shorn lamb’ and that the law was anachronistic and unfair, pointing out that law reform was not the job of the courts, which had to take the law as they found it. The Court rejected the claimant's claim for the costs of surveys and a contingency fund as these were not required to put the chancel into a state of proper repair, and granted the claimant its full costs as the amount found to be due exceeded a without prejudice offer of settlement made by the claimant prior to the hearing. [JG]
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