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Sending Evidence To Court, Rent Proof?

Timewarp
Posts: 96 Forumite


Hi,
We've got to make sure that we send all our evidence at the beginning of January to the court & landlord as we're taking our ex-landlord to court because he hasn't returned our deposit in full. I'm just wondering, how important is it that we send proof that we've paid the rent as the rent payments are not in dispute.
I'd prefer it if the landlord didn't see my bank statements to be honest, and they're from an internet bank anyway so I'd only have printed out copies.
Thanks in advance!
Rob
We've got to make sure that we send all our evidence at the beginning of January to the court & landlord as we're taking our ex-landlord to court because he hasn't returned our deposit in full. I'm just wondering, how important is it that we send proof that we've paid the rent as the rent payments are not in dispute.
I'd prefer it if the landlord didn't see my bank statements to be honest, and they're from an internet bank anyway so I'd only have printed out copies.
Thanks in advance!
Rob
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Comments
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You can black out everything, with a permanent marker, that you don't want anyone else to see apart from the amount of rent deducted. The other amounts are not relevant to your case so they are not needed.I'm not cynical I'm realistic
(If a link I give opens pop ups I won't know I don't use windows)0 -
Would I just need one month's proof, or proof for the whole period of rental?
For hard copies, my bank charge me £10 (as it's an internet based bank, you access all your statements online). Would print-outs be ok?
Thanks again!0 -
Sorry £2.50 for a statement - but if I needed 6 month's worth this would be £15. It seems to be costing us more and more to get our original money back (print outs of the digital photos were £15 too).
Thanks again.0 -
Unfortunately you left it a bit late.
Next time if you want your bank statements use a data subject access request under the Data Protection Act 1998. You need 6 weeks to do this and the cost is £10 for all the information the bank has on you.
By the way £15 for a load of statements versus the amount of your deposit is a good deal particularly if the amount taken was high. You just need to prove there was no reason for the landlord at all to not pay back your full deposit so be prepared for claims that you trashed the property.I'm not cynical I'm realistic
(If a link I give opens pop ups I won't know I don't use windows)0 -
Cheers. I can get about 6 month's worth of statements online or get them printed for £2.50 each so I'll do that.0
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I would have thought that prints of the last 6 months on-line statements would do.
What's the LLORD going to say? That you haven't paid? That would be a very risky thing to do and is unlikely as it would be perjury and you could produce masses of evidence if needed to refute it.
I think you're getting sidetracked from your main issue.
good luck, a mate of mine got £1200 in damages to goods and refunded rent + deposit from a bad landlord who failed to maintain the property, causing a water leak that damaged goods and made the property damp.0 -
real1314 wrote:I would have thought that prints of the last 6 months on-line statements would do.
What's the LLORD going to say? That you haven't paid? That would be a very risky thing to do and is unlikely as it would be perjury and you could produce masses of evidence if needed to refute it.
I think you're getting sidetracked from your main issue.
good luck, a mate of mine got £1200 in damages to goods and refunded rent + deposit from a bad landlord who failed to maintain the property, causing a water leak that damaged goods and made the property damp.
Thanks for your reply. Well I haven't been involved in court issues before so what I've been reading says that proof of rent is important.
All the LL's been saying is that he's taken money from the bond for carpet cleaning & gardening so far. I just wondered if you needed proof that you paid the rent for the court to start looking into it?
I don't think he'd pull that one (saying we hadn't paid rent) as it'd be completely untrue. You never know with this guy though! If he did he'd look like an idiot as he didn't mention it in his 'report' or his court partial-admission.0 -
Rob_Leeds wrote:All the LL's been saying is that he's taken money from the bond for carpet cleaning & gardening so far. I just wondered if you needed proof that you paid the rent for the court to start looking into it?
Give as much proof as you can as anything you don't submit can't be used later.
Who cleaned the carpet? Who did the gardening? A professional service? If he doesn't want to go to court he should have sent a copy of the receipts. Or should have got at least one witness to your dirtiness.
Unfortunately a lot of landlords pull this one on the cleaning and gardening. In one of my experiences it has been true and the landlord was clever enough to get 8 witnesses. The new tenants who were to move into the property, and their friends', the 4 people who lived next door. Also the cleaners who did the heavy duty cleaning where one of my group and 2 of next door.I'm not cynical I'm realistic
(If a link I give opens pop ups I won't know I don't use windows)0 -
Thanks for your reply.
I'm not sure. When he sent the gardener round he said "a friend of his". He's never showed us any receipts at any point.
We contest the cleaning/gardening for quite a few reasons.
1. We steam-cleaned the carpet on our leaving day.
2. The gardener he sent round was sent round a couple of weeks before our tenancy came to an end. In the AST it specifies that he needs to give us 4 weeks written notice to amend things if he thinks we are not complying with the contract. We only got a few days verbal notice and he said the reason for the gardener was because he was selling the house and not because we hadn't abided by the contract.
3. He was totally uncooperative and made excuses every time that we tried to arrange for him to do an inspection against the inventory in the last few weeks of our tenancy.
4. Despite his gardener doing the work, the LL called the garden disgusting after he did the inspection after we left (too late for us to do any corrective actions ourselves).0 -
Small claims judges look at the evidence, listen to both sides and decide on the balance of probabilities.
Just submit as many documents you have to back up your claims, keep your story consistent i.e. about him refusing to view the property when you lived there and don't argue about stuff that you didn't mention in your claim.
Submit evidence to prove you used a cleaner so if you hired the steam cleaner look for a receipt or something on your bank statement to show this. If you borrowed the cleaner get the person you borrowed from to write a short statement saying you borrowed the cleaner on such and such date and get them to sign it and put their name and address on it. If you own the cleaner take a photo of it and photocopy the front part of the manual.
By the way where there no viewings of the property after you gave him notice? If there were viewings of the property it would be very odd for a landlord not to inform their current tenants to tidy something up if it really was "disgusting" and affecting him renting the property out.I'm not cynical I'm realistic
(If a link I give opens pop ups I won't know I don't use windows)0
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