Overpaying rent

MobileSaver

_Penny_Dreadful said:

MobileSaver said:

_Penny_Dreadful said:

TripleH said:

steampowered said:

TripleH said:

I don't  think the fee is excessive or unreasonable (and don't think a court would disagree). However if a one off error I wouldn't charge for it.

Nothing to do with whether the fee is "excessive" or "unreasonable".

The point is whether the landlord has a legal or contractual basis to charge a fee here. They do not.

Genuinely I don't know the answer, but what is the appropriate rule stating they cannot charge a fee? I know there are rules on some fees but assumed this would fall outside such scope.

This type of admin fee is not listed in Schedule 1 of the Tenant Fees Act 2019 and is therefore not a permitted payment.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/4/schedule/1/enacted

However, my reading of the Act is that permitted and prohibited payments only apply when the landlord "requires the person to do any of those things in consideration of the grant, renewal, continuance, variation, assignment, novation or termination of such a tenancy".

Refunding an overpayment would not appear to apply to any of those things and so an admin fee would appear to be perfectly legal if contractually agreed in the tenancy agreement.

The Act applies to all fees in connection with an AST in England.

Page 61 of the guidance for tenants gives examples of fees that are not allowed and I'd say that this fee for the return of the overpaid rent is in line with those examples. 

Unless I am reading it wrong, the actual Tenant Fees Act 2019 says differently.

1 Prohibitions applying to landlords

(6)For the purposes of this section, a landlord requires a relevant person to make a payment, ... if and only if the landlord—

 (a)requires the person to do any of those things in consideration of the grant, renewal, continuance, variation, assignment, novation or termination of such a tenancy,

I cannot see that the refunding of an overpayment is any of those things, can you? (genuine question.)

As you say, the landlord doesn't have to refund the tenant and if this was a prohibited fee then I wouldn't blame the landlord for not doing so. I don't think it's fair to call the landlord a tight git as we don't know whether they pay someone else to handle payments such as an agent or bookkeeper (in which case why should the LL be out of pocket for a tenant's mistake?)