landlord/letting agent advice

Zazy

Hi, please bear with me as this may be long..

I went to view a property a few weeks ago and decided to take it (myself, my other half and our son) we met the landlord, who insisted she loved us and wanted us in. We paid £300 contract/credit checks/reference fees to the agent - all of which have come back perfect.

We handed our notice in on our current property (which does not BEGIN until 23rd of this month - so we're not technically in it yet)

We were told we were perfect tenants, they verbally agreed on a move in date.

Well, the agent told us yesterday they have been struggling to contact the landlord (we wanted another viewing as the property was furnished and the landlord said we could have/buy what we wanted and she would remove the rest so we wished to go over this) she hasn't been returning calls, letters, e-mails etc. Then a man from another agency contacted us and told us he had been instructed to take over the letting, by the landlord. We would find out tomorrow (today) what the outcome was.

He contacted me this morning to say we weren't accepted as we weren't "suitable tenants" due to receiving Working tax credits and Child tax credits - which "bump" up our income ( ?? ) and this has come directly from the landlord.

I asked about our initial fees - having been told at the start that if the landlord backs out we get all our fees back - he said to contact the original agent as he'd taken no money from us. So we went back to the original agent, who have said they can only refund half of the money (£150) due to the fact it's not their fault the landlord has passed the property somewhere else and they have done their job. They have told us that the new lettings agent should refund the other half, due to him having control of the property and they passed all of their work to him, whose then backed out. He insists that we are not owed anything from him as we never paid him (understandable!) and to again go back to the original agent.

We did so this afternoon, we were told the original £150 would be paid today (it hasn't been) and someone would contact us before the end of the day about the rest (they haven't)

These are the questions I have :

1) Where do I stand with my current property? Can I retract the notice without incurring fees (we received a letter stating we would have to pay for their advertising fees if we should retract, but we're not actually in our notice period yet)? And can they say no?
2) Who is liable for our money?
3) Have the original lettings agent broken data protection by passing all of our credit checks, references etc over to someone else who we didn't give permission to?
4) What do we do now? We are looking for another property, but they are few and far between. So we will have to retract the notice unless something comes up before Tuesday.

I'm sorry if none of this makes sense, I have spent the day a mess (pregnancy hormones!) feel free to ask any questions where/if I haven't been clear and I will answer ASAP.

Thank you.