Tenant Nightmare

lucybrown162

Hi
I had a longstanding tenant in my property on an AST. He has resided in the property for coming up to 6 years, with his girlfriend and (now) 2 children.

Over the course of the last few months there have been problems with carpet beetles, mainly in 1 room of the house, and I have had a pest controller visit on 3 occasions so far.

During the process of this, the tenant claimed that some of their property in the bedroom had been damaged and asked if I would be prepared to contribute towards the replacement of these items.

I reviewed the AST for my legal liability and as I suspected I had none:

'The Landlord shall not be required to... keep in repair or maintain anything which the Tenant is entitled to remove from the property.'

Nonetheless, after giving it some consideration and in light of the goodwill in the long-standing tenancy arrangement I said that I would be willing to contribute towards the costs subject to seeing photographic and inventory evidence of their damaged property. I was clear that this was not due to a contractual obligation and was purely a goodwill offer.

After a few weeks, the tenant's girlfriend sent me a series of photos and a list of items that had been damaged in the bedroom. Upon reviewing the list of items I felt that the amount that had apparently been damaged was, by both value and volume, significantly in excess of what you would expect there to be kept in 1 small double bedroom. I followed up with an offer back of 1 month rent free in the property, subject to signing a new AST which would tie them in for 6 months again (they would otherwise have been on a 1 month rolling basis). Again, it was noted in my offer that it was based on goodwill only.

The tenant took great offence at this offer, which amounted to around £300 less than they had wanted from me and it became clear through a series of emails that they did not intend to sign up to a new AST and were therefore unwilling to accept the offer. I suspected at this point that they had plans to take my money and run, which had backfired on them when I made it a conditional offer. Their behaviour became more and more difficult during this time and on 6th November they handed in their notice.

Good news, I thought, owing to their difficult behaviour. But then today I have received a Small Claims Court Claim Form from the Tenant's girlfriend detailing the above in their own terms and asking for the full value of their property, around £2,000.

I absolutely intend to fully defend this but have a few options on how I choose to defend which I could do with some advice on:

1) The claim has come through in the name of the tenant's girlfriend who is not a named party on the AST. Can/should I base my whole defense on this and just say that I have no legal obligaton toward the claimant, having no contractual relationship with her?
2) The AST (to me) is quite clear that I have no responsibility for the contents of the tenants - should I base my whole defense on that without going into the whole goodwill offer, offer not taken up etc etc?
3) Should I provide the whole ins and outs of the above, including (1) and (2) as the initial points but then providing all the emails as evidence of the chain of events as they transpired etc etc? This would not show the tenant in a good light as he and his girlfriend were verbally abusive on several occasions whilst I bit my tongue and remained professional.

And what I would really like to do is put in a counterclaim - cost of pest control visits due to their storing an excessively large amount of soft furnishings inappropriately in a small room??

Would really appreciate some advice as I absolutely cannot end up with a CCJ against me - please help!

G_M

You cannot rely on the terms of the contract to avoid liability.

If damage was caused as a result of some defect in the property, and that defect was your responsibility, then you are liable for the consequential losses. Not under the terms of the AST but under common law.

I assume the damage resulted from the carpet beetle - you don't make this clear?

Whether the owner of the damaged property is named on the AST is irrelevant.

Your defence therefore is whether

* the damage actually happened
* you were responsible for the carpet beetle which caused the damage
* the costs claimed are genuine

lookstraightahead

I'm sure as a tenant you could soft furnish a room to the hilt!

ACG

I cant answer your question but you may find these links useful:
http://www.aboutsmallclaims.co.uk/judgment-taken-off-ccj-register.html
https://www.stepchange.org/debt-info/debt-collection/tomlin-order.aspx

bouicca21

Id be arguing that an infestation occurring some 5-6 years into the tenancy must be attributable to the actions of the tenants.

elsien

How are they saying the damage occurred?
Directly from the infestation or through the measures taken to deal with it?
If the latter, would not some liability be down to the pest controller?

lucybrown162

G_M wrote: »

You cannot rely on the terms of the contract to avoid liability.

If damage was caused as a result of some defect in the property, and that defect was your responsibility, then you are liable for the consequential losses. Not under the terms of the AST but under common law.

I assume the damage resulted from the carpet beetle - you don't make this clear?

Whether the owner of the damaged property is named on the AST is irrelevant.

Your defence therefore is whether

* the damage actually happened
* you were responsible for the carpet beetle which caused the damage
* the costs claimed are genuine

Ah, ok, understood that the AST may be irrelevant. So, to be more clear - the damage to their property was as a result of the infestation and at the point the infestation occurred they'd been living in the property nearly 6 years. The pest controller told me they had a shag pile type rug rolled up in the room which was likely contributing to the issue, their inventory they gave me had 3 rugs in it, so I'd assume they were storing 3 rolled up rugs in a small double bedroom along with a whole host of other items and therefore would be pretty clear that this would be the most likely cause of the problem.

I'm not sure under what circumstances it could be argued that there was a defect that was my fault given the cause of the damage - it's not like it was a leaky pipe or something along those lines.

What do you think?

lucybrown162

Also, should I try and get some legal advice or just crack on and put all of the above into my defense myself?

G_M

lucybrown162 wrote: »

....to be more clear - the damage to their property was as a result of the infestation and at the point the infestation occurred they'd been living in the property nearly 6 years.
OK, now you really need to be more explicit if you want more detailed advice:
* exactly what has been damaged?
* exactly how are the tenants claiming the damage was caused?

The pest controller told me they had a shag pile type rug rolled up in the room which was likely contributing to the issue,
* who owned this carpet? You or the tenants?
* have you got this in writing from the pest controller (or would he put it in writing and/or act as an expert witness if required)?

their inventory they gave me
* ?? please explain- is this the property inventory? Why is it 'their' inventory and why do you not have a copy?
* or is it their claims inventory?

had 3 rugs in it, so I'd assume they were storing 3 rolled up rugs in a small double bedroom along with a whole host of other items and therefore would be pretty clear that this would be the most likely cause of the problem.
* the 3 rugs were theirs? or yours?

I'm not sure under what circumstances it could be argued that there was a defect that was my fault given the cause of the damage - it's not like it was a leaky pipe or something along those lines.

What do you think?

I think I don't fully understand what the tenants are claiming.

lucybrown162

ok, let me try and explain it as well as I can:

what has been damaged - their property in the bedroom which was where the main infestation was (as well as a carpet that was mine, but disregard that) which included 3 rugs, a pram, a mattress, a bed frame, a cot bed and several other items

The tenants claimed that all of those items were damaged irretrievably by the pest infestation and provided photographic evidence of this, along with an inventory of the damaged items.

Their small claims court claim states that I instructed them to remove all of their damaged infested personal items so they threw them out. I did ask them to remove them from the property to try and stop the recurrence of the pests on the advice of the pest controller, what they did with them after that was their own decision.

The rug and the 3 rugs referred to was the tenants.

The pest controller, I don't but I could ask him.

Their inventory refers to the list they sent me of their items damaged by the infestation that they wished me to contribute towards.

Hope that makes things clearer, but let me know if not.

lucybrown162

Thanks, yes they were rolled up and from the inventory of items they gave me there were a lot of items in what is a fairly small double bedroom as well as a double bed.

Sounds like this is the approach I need to take rather than quoting from the AST.