Dear Sir,

You are not legally obliged to complete on a property with charges as it stands to logic.

Please read our reply on this thread.

In any case as from the moment the developer attains the Licence of First Occupation you are obliged to complete on the property or else risk being sued for non compliance as stressed in this other thread.

You can force a cancellation of the contract if there is a charge on it, yes, regardless if there’s a LFO issued already. No-one can force you to select another property, you chose a property specifically in your PPC and only that one and by reasons which are unrelated to yourself has become legally unavailable as there is a charge lodged against it. If you want to swap over to another property a new contract will have to be signed and it’s your option.

So, bottomline, you can pull out now legally despite of the issued LFO (providing this charge is effectively and following your own words in place).

It’s up to the developer to sue you or not for non-compliance; in this case how can they sue you if they themselves are in breach first? Not possible until the charge is lifted.