tenant changing the locks - wrong?

00ec25

Heliflyguy wrote: »

It shows it is important to change the locks back again but the adudicators decision to award £150 for changing the locks without permission and in order to safegaurd the property

The tenants state that they changed the lock as it broke and that they handed in the new keys at check out. There was no evidence to show that they had reported the broken lock to the agent or landlord during the tenancy, given the landlord or agent the opportunity to remedy it first, and the existing lock had been disposed of.
The adjudicator took the view that the tenants should have reported the broken lock to the agents at the time it occurred and that the landlord was entitled to the reasonable cost of changing the lock in order to safeguard the property.

whilst it may seem harsh I think the above is specfici to those circumstances. It has always been emphasised that if you chnage the lock you must reinstate/refit the original for the LL at the end.
It appears in this case they did not and that forms a factor in the judgement. Agreed thou £150 is high when (apparently) they did return the property with a working lock

jjlandlord

If T does not re-instate locks, he cannot be liable for compensation as long as the new lock is similar to the original one.
The only liability would be to pay for the extra key(s) that the landlord/agent may have to get replaced.

The adjudicator took the view that the tenants should have reported the broken lock to the agents at the time it occurred and that the landlord was entitled to the reasonable cost of changing the lock in order to safeguard the property.

This does not make much sense unless the new lock was inferior to the original one.
Indeed, in all cases a landlord cannot be sure that the tenant has made copies of the keys.

Heliflyguy

I agree 00ec25 but if the suitable lock was replaced there should be no reason to give the landlord or agent the opportunity to remedy (at a high cost no doubt) as the property would be returned in the same condition.

I dont believe its up to the adudicators to base their decisions on something that was broken should be reported, only that the property was returned in the same condition.

G_M

It does seem a bizaar decision, but of course it is in no way binding on other adjudicators who may well come to a different conclusion.

As a matter of good practice, I always change the locks when a tenant leaves (as said above, the outgoing tenant may have kept a key - or indeed passed one to a 'friend').

I keep 3 or 4 spare lock barrels, and simply alternate them on each tenancy. And no, I do not charge the outgoing (or incoming!) tenant for this.

princeofpounds

Looks like a bad (in terms of what likely happened) but understandable (in the legal sense) TDS decision to me. It does happen, they aren't that well trained and have to cope with many differing disputes.

It is possible to ask for a case review- I did help a poster here win a review once

But it's a balance of probabilities thing; if LL says they don't have keys, T says they do, and all agree the locks are changed by the T, then it's probably incumbent on the tenant to demonstrate they did things properly.