Deposit return nightmare ADVICE NEEDED

fanflabulous

Hello!

I've been having a complete nightmare getting my deposit returned by my landlady and need some help and advice.

We were in negotiations after we left the property as to what could be deducted as our landlady took £450 for services without discussing this with us first, which I'm sure is illegal. She charged for carpet cleaning, (though we had already paid for this and sent her the receipt) general cleaning (which wasn't required), underpaid rent (because we left the property 10 days before the end of our rental month, though she did get new tenants in before the end of that 10 days and I'm sure it's also illegal to charge tenancy on the same property twice for the same time period), and for removal of furniture. She didn't try to contact us to let us know what needed doing, so gave us no opportunity to arrange services ourselves.

Essentially I want to open a dispute with our tenancy deposit scheme but I can't find our deposit in any of them. We weren't sent this paperwork. I found it once through Shelter's advice page and thought that it was with TDS, but now it isn't showing up and I don't have the details as my boyfriend lost our tenancy agreement.

I have requested details from our landlady but she is no longer responding to any of my emails. I have sent 20-ish asking for her address and details of our tenancy deposit scheme. She is ignoring me!

I don't know where to go from here. Time is ticking on: we moved out on the 25 February 2013 and she stopped negotiations about a month ago. I need to open a dispute to get our money back but without the paperwork, contact from my landlady, and details of where it's held, I have no idea what to do.

If anyone can offer any practical advice as to how I can take this to mediation, that would be incredibly helpful.

I am due to move to Cambridge for uni in less than 3 months and I desperately need that money to go towards my next deposit. I'm getting really worried.:(

[Deleted User]

oh boy oh boy oh boy. If your deposit isn't in any deposit protection scheme then your day just got a lot better. Deposit protection is a legal requirement if a landlord does not protect your deposit you are legally entitled to have it returned, in full, plus the court can award damages of up to 3x the deposit!

You should contact the deposit protection service and ask for guidance on the correct procedure, I believe small claims court (will cost under £100 to file) is the correct avenue.

Also for any further contact: do not send emails, send letters via recorded post.

Although regarding the following:

fanflabulous wrote: »

underpaid rent (because we left the property 10 days before the end of our rental month)

whyyyyyyyyyyyy does nobody do what they're supposed to? Just once it would be great to see someone that had a bad landlord and hadn't somehow shirked on their contractual responsibilities... pay your rent! Although this shouldn't affect the deposit return, she will possibly counter-sue for the unpaid rent.

Annisele

There aren't many deposit schemes. This link gives a list - check with all of them.

For the landlady's address, if the rented property is in England and Wales you could try the Land Registry - I think the search costs £3 or £4 or so. (That might just give you the address of the property though). A better option would be to get your boyfriend to find the tenancy agreement...

I wouldn't chuck words like "illegal" around for things like cleaning costs. Your landlady may well have breached the agreement you had - but it sounds as though you also breached the agreement by failing to pay your rent.

fanflabulous

Hi Citricsquid,

Thanks for the response. I checked the deposit scheme online before and I'm sure it was in either TDS or My Deposits, so I think she did protect it. However, they all say that you have to file a 'dispute' within three months. Three months later I was still negotiating with her, so now that time has passed and I believe that the money would have been released to her.

How do I go to small claims court? I'm certain that we're in the right. I looked up as much info as I could find online before negotiating with her.

RE
"whyyyyyyyyyyyy does nobody do what they're supposed to? Just once it would be great to see someone that had a bad landlord and hadn't somehow shirked on their contractual responsibilities... pay your rent! Although this shouldn't affect the deposit return, she will possibly counter-sue for the unpaid rent. "

-She knew we were moving out 10 days before the end of that rental moth. We paid up till the 25th, which is when we moved out, but the end of the rental month would have been 10 days after. We agreed the move out date with her 7 weeks before left. She never mentioned that we'd need to pay until the end of the month regardless of when we left, so we didn't, because we weren't in the property. That seemed pretty logical to me. Especially since she had viewings and brought in new tenants before the end of our rental month. Anyway, as part of the negotiations we agreed to pay her the 'outstanding' rent, though I'm still annoyed that she didn't mention that we'd need to pay till the 5th even if we moved out on the 25th, since we wouldn't have overlapped rent on another place if she'd have bothered to mention this to us.

I'll check the land registry. She lives in Nottingham, but that's all I know. There's no hope of finding the tenancy agreement unfortunately. He took it from my lovely, filed, organised paperwork and took it to work to call her about something, then left it and no longer works there. He's asked them if they found it but they said they threw everything out that he left. Hmpf!

If I am to take it to small claims, don't I need to send her a letter first? How am I to do that if she won't send me her address? She's hasn't responded to my last 20 emails.

[Deleted User]

fanflabulous wrote: »

Thanks for the response. I checked the deposit scheme online before and I'm sure it was in either TDS or My Deposits, so I think she did protect it. However, they all say that you have to file a 'dispute' within three months. Three months later I was still negotiating with her, so now that time has passed and I believe that the money would have been released to her. How do I go to small claims court? I'm certain that we're in the right. I looked up as much info as I could find online before negotiating with her.

I see, I misread your post. I thought it wasn't with any deposit protection scheme. If it was with a scheme but she didn't provide you with the prescribed information she has still broken the requirements, although less heinous it's still in the wrong and you can still seek compensation.

Small claims costs and procedure depends on your locality (I think) so you'd need to search "[county] small claims" (this website seems to have info) but personally I'd contact the DPS first and ask what the procedure is.

fanflabulous wrote: »

she didn't mention that we'd need to pay till the 5th

Looks like unintentional fault all round then. Did you communicate with her via letter, text, email, phone?

fanflabulous wrote: »

If I am to take it to small claims, don't I need to send her a letter first? How am I to do that if she won't send me her address? She's hasn't responded to my last 20 emails.

I believe you do need contact details however you could be tricky and try and trick her into providing it to you. You could (although I'm not encouraging this and do not know the legality of doing it) pretend to be some else (eg: a person with the letting agent she used) and say you have paperwork that needs to be forwarded due to a possible tax rebate but you need her address. Maybe a carrot on a stick will coax her into providing the address.

*Robin*

fanflabulous wrote: »

We were in negotiations after we left the property as to what could be deducted as our landlady took £450 for services without discussing this with us first, which I'm sure is illegal. She charged for carpet cleaning, (though we had already paid for this and sent her the receipt) general cleaning (which wasn't required), underpaid rent (because we left the property 10 days before the end of our rental month, though she did get new tenants in before the end of that 10 days and I'm sure it's also illegal to charge tenancy on the same property twice for the same time period), and for removal of furniture. She didn't try to contact us to let us know what needed doing, so gave us no opportunity to arrange services ourselves.

fanflabulous wrote:

I checked the deposit scheme online before and I'm sure it was in either TDS or My Deposits, so I think she did protect it. However, they all say that you have to file a 'dispute' within three months. Three months later I was still negotiating with her, so now that time has passed and I believe that the money would have been released to her.

Hi Fanflabulous, sorry to read of the difficulties you are having. Was the £450 your entire deposit?
Unfortunately, you were aware that you had a limited time to object to the deductions your landlady wanted to take from your deposit, but rather than going through TDS/My Deposit's dispute service you have tried to negotiate privately.

As TDS/My Deposit heard nothing from you within the time limit, it seems likely that the money has indeed been released to your ex-landlady. You can't find the entry now because the account has been closed. Have you 'phoned each scheme to ask whether they can help in this situation?

I can't comment on whether her deductions are justified or not; nor if it would be worth the hassle of taking ex-landlady to small claims court to try and get something back.

If you want to pursue her, you might be able to get hold of landlady's home address by asking the new tenants in the property what's on their AST agreement [the address for the serving of notices] - but they're under no obligation to tell you.

Should you acquire her address and then write to ex-landlady, it's generally considered better to send two identical letters from different post offices and keep the 'proof of posting' certificates [free, but you have to ask for], rather than to send a single recorded delivery letter.

If you were my DD, I'd say chalk it up to experience; a harsh lesson re the importance of looking after important paperwork (take a copy!). You still have time to save a deposit before going up to Cambridge (well done, by the way).

ETA: I am assuming that you did have details of the deposit scheme but they were lost with the AST?

dancingfairy

If you haven't got in touch with the deposit people andthe 3 months has lapsed then it seems likely she has claimed the whole lot of the deposit back herself She may have even intentionally led you on so you ran out of time to lodge an appeal :eek:
What evidence do you have about the state of the property at the begining of the tenancy and atthe end? do you still have the check in/check out reports?
You'll need some sort of evidence if you want to take the landlord to court.
df
Edit: not too sure whether you can serve papers at the actual house or whether you need a proper address for her - do you remember what the address for serving notices was on the tenancy agreement? Are you able to get the details from land registry?

DRP

sounds like your best option is court or at least the threat of court.

But contact the deposit schemes first - they may be able to give you more info/advice.

martinsurrey

citricsquid wrote: »

if a landlord does not protect your deposit you are legally entitled to have it returned, in full, plus the court can award damages of up to 3x the deposit!

Can I just pull this up to avoid confusion going forward.

Most of your advice is correct however the bold bit is incorrect

A LL that does not protect a deposit cannot issue a VALID s21 notice without refunding the deposit in full (or with agreed deductions), but they can issue any other notice without returning the deposit (so a section 8 notice).

See The Localism Act 2011 section 184 (read in conjunction with the Housing Act 2004)

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2011/20/section/184


So a tenant is NOT legally entitled to have their deposit returned in full, but if they don’t, it makes eviction harder (not relevant in this case as the OP has moved out).

Also even if a tenant does get the deposit back in full, they are still liable for all normal damages that the deposit covers so could find themselves the loser of a small claims court case and a CCJ, if they don’t give the LL forwarding details.

[Deleted User]

martinsurrey wrote: »

Can I just pull this up to avoid confusion going forward.

Thank you for the information, looking at the linked legislation it seems that the site I was following (gov.uk) is incorrect, or at least misleading. Gov.uk seems to indicate that the deposit should be returned in full:

https://www.gov.uk/tenancy-deposit-protection/if-your-landlord-doesnt-protect-your-deposit

If the court finds your landlord hasn’t protected your deposit, it can order the person holding the deposit to either:

• repay it to you
• pay it into a custodial TDP scheme’s bank account within 14 days
  The court may also order the landlord to pay you up to 3 times the deposit within 14 days of making the order.

Whereas the legislation itself says:

The court may order the person who appears to the court to be holding the deposit to repay all or part of it to the applicant within the period of 14 days beginning with the date of the making of the order

So the correct thing for me to have said would be:

If the landlord does not protect your deposit you are legally entitled to the deposit (less any genuine deductions) and up to 3x the deposit amount as decided by the court.

is that right? Thanks

fanflabulous

Was the £450 your entire deposit?

- No, our deposit was £1280. We managed to get £845 released after sending a long email with all the relevant points of law / regulation. She is still holding the rest for 'services', but has refused to supply any receipts for them.

Have you 'phoned each scheme to ask whether they can help in this situation?

- Yes I have done this today and found that it was with My Deposits, who said it had been released and that I should open a small claims case if we feel that we've been stiffed (she didn't say 'stiffed, but you get the idea).

I am assuming that you did have details of the deposit scheme but they were lost with the AST?

- No the AST didn't include the My Deposits certificate. We were never told where it was held. The AST was taken to work for use of the contact details by my boyfriend (I had filed it nicely and didn't know he'd done this until I needed it for the dispute, grrr). I have requested a copy of the certificate from My Deposits and they say it will be emailed within 4 working days.

I've send her a notification letter of court action which I got from the Shelter website. I've given her till the 27th the refund the money or send a 'substantial response', though I don't know what that means.

I'm confused though, as to how I am supposed to prove that I didn't receive this certificate. How do you prove the absence of something?