Withholding rent for costs/compensation

gerardflanagan

I am going to discuss it with him before taking it any further. My concern is that we won't agree on a figure but I will try. The landlord can't take any of our deposit without our permission, if we refuse it goes to ADR and then court.

I said in my last post I would like half rent for the four months plus the extra cost of running the radiators.

ViolaLass

I think you're mixing up valid points with less important ones. With regards to 8, why was the restaurant !!!!ed off with you? You can't have left the keys with them that often. Could you have left them somewhere else occasionally? If the landlord works/lives that nearby, could the engineer have gone to him first for the keys?

gerardflanagan

We had to leave a spare set pretty much permanently with them. Engineers did go in there quite a few times to get them. It's not a good look for the restaurant having workmen just wandering around while people are trying to eat.

We asked the landlord to provide the engineer with keys and he just told us to leave them with the restaurant.

G_M

Several of us have suggested you give us an idea of the compensation you are seeking. You've listed some topics, but no amounts!

gerardflanagan wrote: »

Compensation issues:
1 Electrical costs for radiators
Very hard to quantify. If you've lived there some years you can compare the gas/electric bills for the relevant 4 months last year, with this year, but that doesn't allow for massive energy price hikes recently. So what figure are you claiming and on what basis?
2 Insufficient radiators
The radiators did not heat the flat properly. There is no statutory level of heating required. The LL provided a source of heating. Forget this claim.The radiators regularly tripped the fuse. And your point is....? Forget this claim.
3 Space consumption
The radiators that he DID provide took up a huge amount of space in a cramped flat. We wouldn't mind if it had been a temporary measure, as he agreed, but it was four months!4 months is temporary. I guess the alternative would have been to ask for rads o be removed to give you more space.... and suffer more cold!
4 Duration of boiler not working
4 months I agree this is a long time. So discuss a reasonable compensation. Apparantly the LL has agreed to this.
5 Failure to comply with the Landlord and Tenants Act
Keep the heating working in a reasonable amount of time See above. An alternative heat source was provided
6 Consistent failure to act reasonably in duties as a landlord
· For this to have any meaning you need to breakdown and quantify your losses in monetary terms.
9 Time and stress
Up to the LL whether he feels a monetary compensation is appropriate to keep his tenant happy.
The compensation we feel is fair is half rent for the four months plus the cost of electrical radiators (compared to what we would have paid for gas).

As explained, you cannot simply pick a figure (half rent for 4 months). You need to justify it.

Well, OK, not for informal negotiation. By all means use this arbitary figure when discussing an agreement with the LL. But your posts have stressed your belief you can rely on the courts. For court use you'll need to justify your figures.

gerardflanagan

Thanks for your reply.

I was just going to quantify the electrical costs by comparing to another four month period in the year. I know it's not the same time of year but it's the best I can do and I'm happy to sacrifice whatever seasonal variance the landlord might claim.

I don't understand how the LL providing a 'source of heating' that doesn't heat the flat properly means he has covered himself. We could see our breath when we got up in the morning !!!!!!, it was uncomfortable, stressful and not what we would have had with a working boiler.

I don't consider four months to be temporary given that out of our 12 month contract those were the four months when we needed heat (the coldest winter on record).

I have a breakdown of the landlord's failures to act reasonably but I don't know how to quantify them. Obviously when I'm already stressed about the issue and he ignores my email and makes commitments that he doesn't follow that is extremely stressful and disheartening.

t0rt0ise

Unfortunately I think you are very unrealistic.

Many people live in houses with insufficient heating all year round and are not entitled to compensation. In the same way when gas heating breaks down, they provide us with one electric heater for the 3 bedroomed house and that is deemed to be fulfilling their legal obligations. I don't believe you will get anywhere with your claim in court, so best to see if you can come to an agreement with the landlord and take what is offered. You are lucky to get anything.

BitterAndTwisted

I suspect that the landlord is waiting for you to open up a discussion about what compensation you think might be due to you. They are hardly likely to pluck a figure out of the air without you providing one as a starting-point. This is why you should attempt to appear reasonable, rather than assuming that you're entitled to half-rent for four months in addition to the extra electricity used.

Any reasonable person, having been provided with alternative heating would have bought some fan-heaters and a couple of timers, if what the landlord had provided was inadequate. If you could see your breath in the bedroom in the mornings I certainly would have done so rather than suffer.

gerardflanagan

I will open a discussion with him. We did use additional fan heaters that we had but they are directional, they can't heat a room. We also bought timers. We didn't have many sockets or much space left for any additional radiators and the ones we already had were regularly tripping the fuse.

gerardflanagan

We have opened discussions now. If we disagree on an amount and withhold, say, £1500 for electricity costs and damages, will that go to the small claims court if they try to sue us for rent arrears? The reason why I ask is because this site says:

https://legal365.secureclient.co.uk/legal365/index.cfm?event=base:article&node=A76076B76046D76675#link2

'If your claim is for less than £5,000, but includes a claim for personal injury, or for housing disrepair to residential premises and damages arising from the disrepair, your case will not be allocated to the small claims track unless the amounts claimed in respect of personal injury, disrepair and damages are each no more than £1,000.'

Well, their claim will be for rent arrears but our counter claim once it goes to court will be for damages of over £1000?! So would it go to small claims or not? Why do they have this £1000 limit compared to the standard £5000?

BitterAndTwisted

DO NOT withhold your rent! Well, not unless you want to be evicted as well as taken to court for the arrears.