Please read - complicated.

mutleyone_2

I am asking for advice on behalf of a friend. Their landlord is also her husbands boss. The husband decided he was leaving for a new job, and gave the appropriate notice. Normally the rent is taken from his wage, before he is paid it. This final wage was due today, and has not gone in. On contacting the employer, she stated she had paid it over last night. The bank say nothing is pending. She first asked if there was a problem with the amount...and said that she had sent a letter, explaining why it wasnt a full wage...they were taking money for a deposit. No letter has been received and wage slip is to be faxed over 'later'.

My friend and husband have been in the property for six months and no deposit was required as they were all friends whom have now fallen out. Nothing was mentioned or agreed in writing about removing a deposit from final wage.

There is lots and lots more, but thats the gist of it. What my friend would like to know, is where do they stand lawfully? Can the employer/landlord legally take money for a deposit at the END of a terminated tenancy...the employer/landlords were the ones that wanted my friend and husband to move...as they wanted to move back home.

climbgirl

mutleyone wrote: »

Can the employer/landlord legally take money for a deposit at the END of a terminated tenancy

No, they cannot. By law, any rental agreements started after 2007 have to have the deposit protected by one of three tenancy deposit protection schemes. If the landlord has not done this at the start of the tenancy (they cannot do it at the end), they are breaking the law and you can take them to small claims for three times the amount of the deposit (this is not a guaranteed amount but has been given by some courts).

Did your friend and husband sign any kind of contract given that they are renting through a friend?

BitterAndTwisted

The money is being snatched to cover any potential damage to the property once it's handed back. Taking a deposit from a salary-payment is most unconventional and I think your friends should get in touch with CAB and have a look on the Shelter website to see if there's any information on there which might help them.

Was there an inventory done when the tenancy began?

Annisele

Is the accommodation tied to the job in some way (eg your friend's OH is a farmhand and lives in a cottage on that farm)? Or is it just that the friend's OH's boss and LL just happen to be the same person?

Shelter's Tenancy checker should help you work out what sort of tenancy your friend has (I've linked to the one for England and Wales, but if you're elsewhere you can poke around the site to find the right one). The type of tenancy they have can make quite a big difference to their rights.

Jenniefour

Has your friend got anything in writing, like a tenancy agreement? Would it be part of the husbands written contract of employment? That's where to start - any documentation about the tenancy.

mutleyone_2

I've asked my friend to reply to the quotes below, she is here with me now.

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

The money is being snatched to cover any potential damage to the property once it's handed back. Taking a deposit from a salary-payment is most unconventional and I think your friends should get in touch with CAB and have a look on the Shelter website to see if there's any information on there which might help them.

Was there an inventory done when the tenancy began?

There was no inventory done when the tenancy began. The property is now in a better condition than it was when we arrived. We have fixed up some things that were damaged before we moved in, out of goodwill. There is NO damage from us.

Annisele wrote: »

Is the accommodation tied to the job in some way (eg your friend's OH is a farmhand and lives in a cottage on that farm)? Or is it just that the friend's OH's boss and LL just happen to be the same person?

Shelter's should help you work out what sort of tenancy your friend has (I've linked to the one for England and Wales, but if you're elsewhere you can poke around the site to find the right one). The type of tenancy they have can make quite a big difference to their rights.

My husbands boss and landlord are the same person. We have a 6 month short assured tenancy. The job was linked to the tenancy in that if my husband stopped working for them, we would be liable to pay £1200 a month instead of £700 a month. Other than that, the tenancy is not linked to the job.

Jenniefour wrote: »

Has your friend got anything in writing, like a tenancy agreement? Would it be part of the husbands written contract of employment? That's where to start - any documentation about the tenancy.

The tenancy states nothing about a deposit. At all. Nothing in the contract of employment relating to renting from them either.

I have contacted CAB whom have said they are most definitely breaking the law and to try and start negotiations with them, we will try, but I doubt it will be met with any success, they seem determined to make life as hard for us as they can. Basically it looks like there is no quick way to resolve this problem, which is going to leave us with no money to oversee the direct debits due out on the 1st of April.

BitterAndTwisted

What absolute swines!

Your only recourse is to threaten to go to the Small Claims Court. To start proceedings will cost you about £50 but as there was no inventory they will not be able to get away with retaining any of your deposit unless they have other documentary evidence as proof. As it wasn't taken at the beginning of the tenancy they won't be able to lodge it with one of the tenancy-deposit once the tenancy is over. Then, you could threaten to ask the court to award you three-times the deposit as penalty for not protecting it in one of the three approved schemes. I'm not 100% certain how a court would view this as taking a deposit at this late stage is, as I said, unconventional.

It might be best to wait and see what the payslip says about this deduction and what they call it before going in all guns blazing. And then try to negotiate as best you can.

DVardysShadow

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

What absolute swines!

Your only recourse is to threaten to go to the Small Claims Court. To start proceedings will cost you about £50 but as there was no inventory they will not be able to get away with retaining any of your deposit unless they have other documentary evidence as proof. As it wasn't taken at the beginning of the tenancy they won't be able to lodge it with one of the tenancy-deposit once the tenancy is over. Then, you could threaten to ask the court to award you three-times the deposit as penalty for not protecting it in one of the three approved schemes. I'm not 100% certain how a court would view this as taking a deposit at this late stage is, as I said, unconventional.

It might be best to wait and see what the payslip says about this deduction and what they call it before going in all guns blazing. And then try to negotiate as best you can.

While I agree with this as the correct course of action if this is viewed as a tenancy issue, this would not be my preferred method of approach.

I regard this as an employment matter and unlawful deduction of wages - and therefore to be taken to an employment tribunal.

Even if the money was justifiable under the tenancy, it would not be legal to deduct it from pay - so if the challenge is purely to legality of deduction from pay, you don't need to argue the tenancy issues - you should still win this even if the deposit was legally supportable. And if you want 2 bites at the cherry, the time limit on an employment tribunal is 3 months, whereas it is 6 years for the small claims route.

PasturesNew

Also, the AST.... how much notice did the landlord give? Can you give some dates here.

Is the AST in a written format? What was the start date/end date?

Have the landlords issued an actual, real, valid, S21 notice in writing?
If so, what dates are on that? What date was it received?

PasturesNew

There are two separate issues here:

1] Unlawful deduction of wages. A posting about this specific part (cut down to relevant bits) might be a good new thread to start in the Employment forum on MSE

2] The tenancy, irregularities, what's illegal, what's the situation, what rights do you have, what should you do now.

Jenniefour

I suspect DVardy'sShadow is right here - that firstly it should be dealt with as an employment issue. Pleased you've got a tenancy agreement. No inventory means they can't claim for damages - since they don't have proof of the condition in the first place. And I'm not suggesting you have - quite the contrary, you have improved the property - but when things like this happen people can get bloody minded. So make sure you take extensive photo's before you vacate the property to get evidence that everything is as it should be, and more.

Good luck with that.