UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hello,

I am seeking some help, I have no idea where to go, or what's the best option for me, so any advice is appreciated.

In Summary, I have recently left a rented property where i was a tenant for 6 years, the house was fairly neglected to begin with, the appliances, carpets, walls, etc. were all old and worn from the start.

The LL is now seeking to take my entire deposit for cleaning of said appliances and replacement of a carpet in a small room due to a stain, removal of a couple of bags of rubbish from the garden.

However, I had to remove the previous tenants waste at my expense at the start, there was a time that a flooded bathroom that also affected the kitchen below that took 8 months to be repaired (In a house with a child under 1), when the repairs were made we were left without sanitation for 2 nights and no arrangements were made. And we were immediately served a section 21 when questioned why the rent was being increased by 20%. I'm pretty sure these are clear breached of the landlord and tenant act and the retaliatory & deregulation act.

What do i do?

Thanks

Is your Deposit protected in an approved Scheme?

Yes - Will my claims against breaches of regulations be suitable to raise in dispute through them or do I need to take those elsewhere?

Do I agree to release the deposit and go after the managing agent directly or do I dispute through the DPS?

Hang on, calm down...

Right - if everything was done correctly with the Deposit and it's protected... then your first port of call is to the Landlord / Agent and you tell them that you don't agree with the proposed Deposit deductions (100% of it) and you intend to go through the Deposit Scheme's Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) process. You can even go and look this up for the Scheme your Deposit is with. And you say, you're still open to reasonable deduction proposals (if you are, which of course you are).

You don't agree to release the Deposit or really do anything else at this stage.

The hope is that you get some cogs whirring in someone's head and they assess (for themselves) that it's going to be a real PITA to go through the Scheme's ADR process and it might well be wiser to negotiate more fairly.

After you've done that you can come back here... or you can ask more questions if you want (like, I'm assuming because you said "release" the Deposit is held with the Scheme - custodial). You'll tell us more if you need to.