charging me for repairs

john1964golf

Can anyone give me some advice? I have just moved from a council house into a larger house.Just returned from holiday yesterday to find a bill for £4300 for repairs to my old house!! As far as I was concerned I left property in better condition than when I first moved in 8 years ago! Can they do this charging me for missing door that was not there when I moved in fitting a whole new kitchen toilet seat,plug for sink!!!HELP

Blacksheep1979

john1964golf wrote: »

fitting a whole new kitchen toilet seat

You had a toilet in the kitchen?

theartfullodger

As far as I was concerned I left property in better condition than when I first moved in 8 years ago!

What evidence (inventory, check-in/out report, photos... ) do you have to support that ?? In your shoes I'd politely & clamly query the bill with (I presume the same council) council & ask them to justify it.

If they charged you for a new plug for the sink, you did you wash up all these years without one (or was it 100% take-away)???


Cheers!


Artful

john1964golf

The plug was for a small wash hand basin in the toilet that I had fitted because they refused to fit one.It never had a plug!! The toilet seat was one that I replaced theirs with because it was horrible!! Never had a check before I left only check was 8 years ago when I exchanged into the property.

theartfullodger

john1964golf wrote: »

The plug was for a small wash hand basin in the toilet that I had fitted because they refused to fit one.It never had a plug!! The toilet seat was one that I replaced theirs with because it was horrible!!

(No offence) but it amazes me that tenants do work for the landlord (Council, HA or private) at tenants expense in the first place rather than forcing LL to fix things (yes I know getting councils to do things is "interesting") - then being surprised when this leads to problems at end of tenancy. If you have evidence there never was a plug than I'd say you can tell 'em to whistle for the plug..
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Re the replaced toilet seat I'd suggest (you may angrily disagree) that if you chucked out "their" toilet seat they are entitled to a replacement: However, they are only entitled to a replacement "less fair wear & tear" since their last new one.. and 8 years would normally be, I think, considered a reasonable time for LL to replace..

Never had a check before I left only check was 8 years ago when I exchanged into the property.

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In that case I'd be interested in seeing what the Landlord(Council) come up with as evidence for anything needing replaced. That they may have decided after you left to refurbish the place is their decision, not necessarily one you should pay for.


Clearly you're not one of those "interesting" tenants that leaves places in a mess: They should pay.

Odd that the council appear to have no checkin/checkout process?? If they found a private landlord doing that (no checks) & then sending them a bill the council would chuck the book at the Landlord, and quite right too!!

Cheers!


Artful

mostlycheerful

Golly, that’s harsh and on the face of it sounds like possible gross incompetence or maybe even a scam.

If faced with this I’d probably type up several pages refuting all of it in lots of detail and list it all professionally as points 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2.1, 2.1.1, 2.1.2 etc and couch it all in as neutral and professional terminology as you can and show the chancers that they’re in for a rough ride all the way if they persist with this outrageous nonsense. Got any correspondence and photos and receipts for work done to back up your story? If so append copies of all them and a typed list appendix 1 listing them all.

Under their address on the covering letter do cc your solicitor and do send a copy of the whole package to a solicitor, any solicitor will do at this stage, just whoever you can get at short notice. Anyone other than a slapdash incompetent should notice that you’ve cc’ed your solicitor so straight away that lets them know that you’re not alone and that you mean business and that there is a professional on the case.

Then if they don’t roll over and agree your points and humbly beg apology for their error then, what I would probably do next, and have had to do on several occasions, is send the whole package again to someone more senior than the jobsworth you’ve initially targeted and this time, if by now you’re already running out of patience with their behaviour and your lack of satisfaction and want to make an impression on them and speed things up, is to add in the front letter in bolded block capitals 14 point font :

URGENT : IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED
WITHOUT PREJUDICE
LETTER OF COMPLAINT

And anyone receiving this who knows their onions will sit up and take notice. A lot of people will take a Without Prejudice notice seriously but many of them, interestingly, don’t know what it means except that it means you’re being serious. To see the various legal interpretations of what it is currently held to mean look it up and you’ll see a consensus of opinion but also some variations so copy and paste them all. As I understand it the gist of it is that you’re hereby giving them a chance to settle this without taking them to court and that therefore the contents of this letter are not admissible to the case - unless you later decide to include it. But that’s just my amateur way of putting it and, as I said, you can read various ways that this is expressed by legal people and writers. And possibly someone here might be able to correct the way I’ve put this if in fact I’m wide of the mark. Anyway, the point is that it lets them know that you’re serious and that they’d better pay attention and do something about it. And now, not just when they get round to it.

And if you really want to go all out you can also include LETTER BEFORE ACTION but that's probably just over egging it.

Similarly Letter of Complaint has specific legal meaning and has to be stated clearly in order for your letter to be considered a complaint. In the absence of stating Letter of Complaint they can happily not consider it as an actual complaint, despite its contents clearly unmistakeably being a complaint, and therefore relegate it to the piles of other boring admin work that they’ve got going on and therefore mostly ignore it and just pass it around people’s in trays and get someone junior to deal with it and without particularly bothering to do anything about it themselves. Yes, if you want someone senior to look into it and hopefully see sense and cancel or significantly reduce this stuff then these tips should get your job to the front of the queue and some proper prompt attention.

However this is only necessary or useful if you’re ramping things up, your policy may in fact be to slow things down and keep it small and quiet with the underlings and just spin them out rather than bringing it to the attention of the big guns. Only raise the temperature if you’re not getting satisfaction from the junior people and want to take it further. Often the lower orders can in fact be persuaded to see sense if you articulate the problem clearly and professionally and politely.

If I’m going in heavy then sometimes I’ll register post it to them so that again emphasises your serious intent and doesn’t allow them any leeway to pretend that they didn’t receive it.

Then either leave them to stew and wait for a written response which you’ll probably get within days - or if you want to you can phone them up and politely ask if they can please check if it’s been received but normally I wouldn’t particularly attempt to start going through it with anyone on the phone unless suddenly you find someone senior wanting to have a chat in which case be ready with a copy of it in front of you to go through.

Obviously don’t include any swearing or anger or personality stuff with these people even if they’re being obtuse or ignorant or rude as that is often counter productive and gives them an excuse to put the phone down and criticise you. Keep cool and polite and professional at all times. If possible you want them to like you and be on your side and see your point, not turn against you and hate you and do everything they can to frustrate you.

Hope this is helpful, let us know how you get on as that might be helpful for other people faced with this kind of stuff. Good luck.

harz99

john1964golf wrote: »

Can anyone give me some advice? I have just moved from a council house into a larger house.Just returned from holiday yesterday to find a bill for £4300 for repairs to my old house!! As far as I was concerned I left property in better condition than when I first moved in 8 years ago! Can they do this charging me for missing door that was not there when I moved in fitting a whole new kitchen toilet seat,plug for sink!!!HELP

Yes depending on your tenancy agreement they probably can charge you, maybe not for the loo seat or plug, but if you have (and it seems from the post you probably have) replaced the existing standard Council supplied kitchen with a non standard one (even if better) they will be able to restore the kitchen to its original spec and ask you to pay for it.

Did you have written permission to do any "improvements", if not then you may well have a problem and should probably take legal advice (maybe via CAB) rather than rely on these forums for guidance.

Running_Horse

john1964golf wrote: »

Can anyone give me some advice? I have just moved from a council house into a larger house.Just returned from holiday yesterday to find a bill for £4300 for repairs to my old house!! As far as I was concerned I left property in better condition than when I first moved in 8 years ago! Can they do this charging me for missing door that was not there when I moved in fitting a whole new kitchen toilet seat,plug for sink!!!HELP

£4,300 is a lot of money for a door, toilet seat, and plug.

Care to let us know what else is on that list?

harz99

Running_Horse wrote: »

£4,300 is a lot of money for a door, toilet seat, and plug.

Care to let us know what else is on that list?

I think that, notwithstanding the lack of punctuation in the OP, the clue is in the "fitting a whole new kitchen".

Councils and HAs don't like having housing stock with non standard fittings which they cannot get spares etc. for, and so will do what has been done to the OP.

Running_Horse

Oops. Missed that small detail. We get people on here agonising about repainting a room in the same colour in private rented, so fitting a whole new kitchen would account for some. But £4,300 for a kitchen? Did they lay marble flooring?

dell12

I think that unless you've got proof of how the place was when you moved in you're going to struggle to prove your point i'm afraid.

I've been in several situations with private sector landlords and it really is difficult to subsequently prove that the house was in a poor state when you moved in. Mostly though its fairly small amounts. £4,300 is serious money though.