There was aprogram on tv a while back on this. You may be liable for costs to maintain your local church if your home is built on land once owned by the church. When the church sold the land they may have installed a clause legally binding the owner to pay such fee,s. Its your legal responsibility to pay for things like new roofs etc. The couple on the program had to sell their home to pay off the repair bills to the church. May be worth checking if your home is on such land.
http://www.countrylife.co.uk/propert...el-repair.html
The Wallbanks, the couple who had inherited the farm, fought the case to the House of Lords, but, in the end, the Church prevailed, and they had to pay out hundreds of thousands of pounds. As a result, nobody else has dared fight another case, and, for now, those who own land with this particular liability can, in theory, be asked for funds at any time. The position taken by the Church of England is that the law states that it’s actually legally required to seek these funds from owners (instead of from other funding agencies, for example), and that those who do pay had prior knowledge of the possibility. ‘We don’t know of anybody being asked to pay chancel-repair liability when they weren’t previously aware of the risk,’ says a spokesman.