given notice to landlord and....

Werdnal

Yes you are correct, a LL cannot claim rent from 2 people for the same period, on the same property, so you are due a refund for the amount you paid to cover the overlap.

I would continue with the stern letter advised by GM earlier in this thread, and add to that, that you now require the refunded amount, plus your full deposit back as the new tenant moving in and making changes to decore etc, has negated any claim the LL could have against your deposit amount.

vroombroom

Thank you - we emailed the letter and posted as GM stated. I know LL has access to his emails, so will wait with baited breath!!

debrag

I'm sure the LL knows. He returns on 2nd September plenty of time to give her the keys for 7th September.

Also her tenancy starts the date she moves her stuff in. Who rightly gives permission to move stuff in before the start date ?!

Werdnal

By the way, I have just seen your point on the utilities, and I beg to differ.

If you expected to remain liable for the "old" property until the 6th, then you should not have transferred any utilities yet. I agree that this could be construed as surrender the tenancy and does complicate your position here. You should have taken on responsibility for the new place and kept the old place in your name until the tenancy officially ended or you handed back your keys, as until then you are wholly responsible for the property and your tenancy continues. Even if you had them addressed to "the occupier" this is not really the correct way to do things.

As it is, this new tenant moving in means you have avoided paying any utilities which she is using, BUT you did not know of this situation when you changed the accounts!

Werdnal

debrag wrote: »

Also her tenancy starts the date she moves her stuff in. Who rightly gives permission to move stuff in before the start date ?!

A naive LL who doesn't understand what they are doing - plenty of them around, see them here on a regular basis!

jjlandlord

Werdnal wrote: »

If you expected to remain liable for the "old" property until the 6th, then you should not have transferred any utilities yet.

OP said she closed the accounts with utility providers yesterday as a result of discovering that someone had taken possession of the place and thus likely be using the utilities that she was paying for.

Werdnal wrote:

Yes you are correct, a LL cannot claim rent from 2 people for the same period, on the same property, so you are due a refund for the amount you paid to cover the overlap.

Rent paid in advance is not automatically refundable: It must be expressly agreed.
But here considering that it seems likely that the landlord has unlawfully took possession of the property and re-let it he may be in his interest to correctly compensate OP to make the threat of civil claim go away.

Werdnal

JJ Landlord, read post #21. Not sure if the OP is getting confused, but says in that post that they transferred the accounts to new property on 11th August - yesterday was the 23rd!

Whilst I agree that new "tenant" moving in obviously complicates the issued and OP does not want to be paying for their utility useage, so in this situation she closed the accounts yesterday, I would still dispute that transferring account on the 11th, was not the correct procedure! Both properties could have run their accounts in OP's name, until tenancy ended.

vroombroom

sorry Werdnal its me not explaining properly.

The TV licence, the water board, and the council tax were all transferred to our new house on the 11th August, so they were transferred into 'The Occupier' for us to up till the 6th Sept. The gas and leccy - my partner works for them - so he kept them in our name so we were going to pay the final bill when we took reads and handed back keys on the 6th Sept.
Obviously this has changed with the new tenant so OH has had the gas and leccy closed in our name.

So basically what I need to know is that, with new tenant moving in on Tuesday, do we have to pay for council/water/tv licence etc up till the 6th Sept (as we have written down) or do we pay up till Tuesday when she moves in?

sorry for waffling!!

marcssteve

Hi Werdnal. Yeah I guess I was wrong in this case. Its true that if a person is paying for the two rooms simultaneously then, he surely has the access to both the rooms for the prescribed period of time. Well, in this case I guess then the land lord is doing a mistake with the tenant and Vroombroom can claim for this thing.

chris_m

vroombroom wrote: »

So basically what I need to know is that, with new tenant moving in on Tuesday, do we have to pay for council/water/tv licence etc up till the 6th Sept (as we have written down) or do we pay up till Tuesday when she moves in?

TV Licence - no problem, you've told them your new address and your current licence will "simply follow" you.

Council Tax, water and anything else - I'd tell them you moved out on the first date that you no longer had exclusive occupation - the 22nd at a guess, as that's the first time you realised that the new tenant was already moving in. Definitely NOT next Tuesday.