Private renting question, advice needed

Callie22

Just to give you an example of what private renting is like, just before Christmas OH and I were evicted from our rented house because we'd reported the landlord to the local Environmental Health department. We had been struggling with the landlord and letting agency for nearly two years to try to get some very serious repairs done. We'd taken endless days off to accommodate inspections that were cancelled with five minute's notice, and to be there for builders who never turned up. We'd done everything by the book - problems noted politely in writing etc etc, but in the end our health started to suffer and we decided our only option was to get the local authorities involved. They declared the house hazardous and ordered the landlord to carry out urgent repairs, but less than ten hours after the agency had found out what we'd done, we had an eviction notice pushed through the door. The notice wasn't valid but as the letting agent had made threats against us, we had no option but to leave.

We then had to pay out £300 for referencing for the new place, plus put down £250 of an £850 deposit - this £550 was non-refundable should we 'fail' the checks. We also had to pay out another couple of hundred pounds for 'administrative' costs, plus all of the general costs of moving. We moved into our new flat to find our new landlord has much the same attitude to repairs as our old one ...

That move was our eighth in ten years and it's massively stressful - the rental market in this country has got noticeably worse in that time and it's just a free-for-all. Anyone who gives up a secure tenancy to move into a private rental is, in my opinion, absolutely insane.