Landlord Complications.

[Jeffrey Shaw 90]

On 07/04/2021 at 18:45, spider1 said:

South yorkshire police  have there hands full with proper criminal activity no mind some one who has fell  out with there landlord they should sort it out between 

them selves and move on 

Better to let SYP decide if it wishes to investigate criminal conduct. Landlords who get away with harassment once will quite possibly do so again. Parliament decided to criminalise harassment; and an unenforced criminal offence is pointless.

[burghley 10]

Bit of an update.

We've finally found another (much nicer) property and moving out at the end of the month.

The landlord tried to issue us an illegal notice by email saying we had 5 weeks to move out because he wants to sell. No Form 6A. No paperwork/documents through the post. Nothing. 🤣 He's honestly got no clue!
Told the Council's TRO and they've tried to contact him, now he's gone silent, even after we wrote him an email with our months notice to vacate and asked him to confirm an agreed date/time for handover and inspection.

So glad we're getting out.
 

[Hippogriff 10]

And what will you be doing about the Deposit situation once you're safely somewhere else and you can catch time to breathe?

[burghley 10]

19 hours ago, Hippogriff said:

And what will you be doing about the Deposit situation once you're safely somewhere else and you can catch time to breathe?

We've instructed a solicitor to look over everything for us, asked them to let us know where we'd stand and if it's worth taking to court. 

I've sent them a folder consisting of 235 items (scanned docs, email communications and pictures) so hopefully we'll have a good chance

[Hippogriff 10]

Is that a no-win-no-fee Solicitor? It's not really needed if your Deposit was taken (and subsequently returned) but never protected. You'd said - "We'd caught him out that he had not put the money into a deposit scheme, which we also know is illegal." and I agree. You shouldn't need a Solicitor to pore over 235 items of anything. It is a clear-cut case... very black-and-white... a Court (if it gets that far) would consider a) was a Deposit taken by the Landlord and, if so, b) was it protected at all and, if so, c) was it done both in time and correctly?

 

I would have started with a Letter Before Action - template letters are available for download on various sites - and progress with confidence of success. The aim is not to end up at Court... but to get the Landlord to realise the pickle he is in - the zero chance of success - and offer a settlement, which you would accept... all without any Solicitor taking a portion of what's due you. You can do all this when you're safely in your new property... it doesn't have to be while the current tenancy is ongoing.

 

P.S. - the reason why I suggest you don't need help is because often a Landlord just needs to realise (ignorance is no excuse) that if they go to Court the Court has no discretion to let them off, unless they can prove they took a Deposit and protected it - which this Landlord cannot. All a Court has discretion over is the amount of penalty. Sometimes Landlords do not understand this - they think there's ways and means to get out of it - "my mum passed away", " I was on holiday", "I forgot", "I didn't know I had to do it", "I only did it a little late", "I protected it but forget to serve the right set of documents on the Tenant"... none of them are valid excuses... it's a) was a Deposit taken, b) was it protected. You know a) = yes and b) = no, so you will win a Court case... but everyone would prefer a settlement.

Edited June 16, 2021 by Hippogriff
Added P.S.

[francypants 441]

It's so easy and cheap to lodge a claim for return of deposit in the Small Claims Court. There is no need to use a solicitor just do it yourself.

[Jeffrey Shaw 90]

Yes. Start at https://www.gov.uk/make-money-claim

[Hippogriff 10]

Rather than Deposit return... which appears to have already happened... I am guiding towards following-up on a non-protection penalty... of 1x to 3x the Deposit value. The fact it was returned at some point doesn't absolve the Landlord of failing to protect it when it was taken, as a Deposit, in the first place. The act of failing to protect the Deposit still occurred, therefore the penalty is still due... but it won't come to the Tenants automatically... they'll have to start somewhere.

 

I'm a Landlord myself and there is no excuse for not protecting a Tenant's Deposit. It is simple to do. Can cost nothing. And if a Landlord doesn't bother... then you start to suspect they always wanted to take advantage of you, from the outset. In the past too many Landlords thought that a Deposit taken was some kind of perk of the job that they just 'stole' at the end of the tenancy. They fell into the trap of thinking it was, kind of, their money. It never was. It always was the Tenant's money.  Seeing as the legislation has been in place since (around) 2007... there's no excuse for a Landlord taking a Deposit to not protect it. Any Landlord who doesn't isn't aware of their obligations... or is (and thinks the Tenant isn't).

 

I would start with a Letter Before Action along with a realistic offer to settle (maybe 2x if we are talking about a single tenancy), as I said... the Landlord may realise their predicament (and that they're on a hiding-to-nothing) and either agree or counter-offer to settle (likely 1x or 1.5x). That might well be something the OP is interested in, especially when moving.

[Jeffrey Shaw 90]

Yes- but why not start at 3 x deposit, since that's what is set as the penalty if the matter comes to Court?  L ought to be delighted to settle-up at once for the full amount, avoiding potentially expensive litigation and unwelcome publicity.

[Hippogriff 10]

19 hours ago, Jeffrey Shaw said:

Yes- but why not start at 3 x deposit, since that's what is set as the penalty if the matter comes to Court?  L ought to be delighted to settle-up at once for the full amount, avoiding potentially expensive litigation and unwelcome publicity.

It is not 3x guaranteed. Anyway, if you start at 3x the Landlord might think - "that's my maximum exposure anyway" (not thinking of any costs) - and decide to take a chance on the OP not even following-through. Negotiation tactics are very personal... but my proposal was to offer the Landlord a sweetener and get them to seriously contemplate not even bothering going to Court and settle the matter once and for all quickly. It was also so the OP can appear fair-minded and principled and use that as a short-cut to a settlement - a bird in the hand for both sides.

 

Of course, the Landlord might think there are extenuating circumstances in their favour... maybe they have a single property and are one of these 'accidental' Landlords, maybe they lost their job at the time or had a family crisis that they think can explain-away the failure... of course, none of these alter the facts - a case would still be won but the Court's discretion of 1x to 3x might come into play (my impression was they try to reserve the 3x penalties for egregious repeated offenders who showed no interest in complying - I could be wrong)... and the Landlord might, reasonably, think - "I feel sure I would be more on the 1x side of things, I'm willing to take a chance".

 

I never thought of publicity as a negative consequence for a small private Landlord, but I guess it could be - there'll be records of it 'out there' for people to see. That's a good point. Regardless, the Landlord should be delighted to not go to Court, for any reason, agreed... my advice to any Landlord is to settle before it gets there. Plenty moan about the penalty not being proportionate... and why should the Tenant get a windfall as they suffered no loss... it's all academic, the law is clear, easy to comply with, and any Landlord who moans like this gets short shrift from me.

 

The OP should remember...

 

  - they have a long time to act, 6 years, it doesn't have to be rushed

  - you don't need to pay anyone to do this, you can start yourself

  - a Court has no discretion to impose a penalty of 0x if the Deposit was not protected

  - it's fine starting with 3x, the Landlord starting at 1x and everyone settling on 2x (or another figure)

  - the penalty is 1x to 3x (not necessarily in multiples of x) per tenancy (but usually)

 

So... if there was a first fixed term tenancy starting in 2019 that ran until 2020... and then it was renewed as a new fixed term tenancy running from 2020 to 2021... and the Deposit was not protected either time... that's 2x to 6x as a penalty.

 

The OP is moving out at the end of this month... my suggestion is to wait until they're in their new place before commencing anything... just retain known working contact details for the Landlord and hit them with a LBA when the dust settles. There is still the challenge of the tenancy ending... I gather there's no Deposit live at the moment... so I wonder what approach the Landlord will take to any damages that are considered beyond fair wear-and-tear when any Check-out is done. It will be interesting if the OP comes back on this.

Edited June 21, 2021 by Hippogriff

[Hippogriff 10]

On 12/06/2021 at 10:39, burghley said:

We've instructed a solicitor to look over everything for us, asked them to let us know where we'd stand and if it's worth taking to court. 

I've sent them a folder consisting of 235 items (scanned docs, email communications and pictures) so hopefully we'll have a good chance

The onus is not on you, as Tenant, to prove the Deposit was never protected. The onus is on the Landlord to prove the Deposit was protected - fully, in time and correctly (by that I mean that the Prescribed Information was served to you at the time).

[burghley 10]

Thankyou for your helpful input, Hippogriff.
We've asked the solicitor to provide us with the law where we would stand in court with regards to the matters of:
- Them not completing repair works that were originally reported in 2019

- The wording of the 'updated' tenancy agreement

- The way he served notice (which was invalid)

- The unannounced attendances

- The failure of gas/electric safety checks

- Mould situation which has been medically confirmed as a detriment to my health

- The deposit (which we're aware of) for the sake of getting it in writing.
They've been made very aware we're not instructing them for court purposes as we'll be dealing with that ourselves and we've simply requested professional opinion.

 

From the deposit side, the Landlord definitely won't have any evidence or shown attempts of securing the deposits, yet we've got the emails from him stating 'he couldn't put it in', and in his own handwriting on the 'updated' tenancy agreement that we, the tenants, should put that money into the DPS, which wouldn't go down well in the courtroom!
 

We would offer a LBA; however since 2nd June, we gave our notice to vacate by letter. A further 2 emails, a (read) WhatsApp message and a letter/reminder (guaranteed next day, which wasn't successful due to no answer) to arrange a mutual date/time for handover and property inspection before 2nd July, we've heard absolutely nothing in return. Again, I presume all of this would go hand-in-hand in our favour.
It's highly unlikely he's going to respond to agree a figure for his neglect. At this rate, we'll simply just be issuing a letter for attending court, once we've received the response from the solicitors, which will assist us in making our claim as we're not sure what is reasonable to request money figure wise to show for the above as we can say how it's affected us emotionally and physically.