Landlord ordered to pay tenant compensation after playing deposit Hokey Cokey

You know how the popular children’s song goes; “When you put your left arm in, your left arm out, In, out, in, out, you shake it all about…” and this case was very similar in regards to the tenant’s deposit.

The tenant paid over £1,000 for and signed a 12-month AST, and then proceeded to renew with another 12-month agreement thereafter, staying in the property for a total of two years.

During the tenants stay, they looked after the property as if it were their own and left the property in immaculate condition. However, the property was very old, as a result, suffered with damp and mould. This was very much to the tenants’ dismay and not for lacking of trying to mitigate the issue themselves with the correct ventilation.

At the end of tenancy, the landlord wished to make deductions from their deposit in order to get the damp issues resolved. Of course, this was wholly unfair and the tenants immediately contacted the DPS in order to raise a dispute to these claims.

The DPS were very helpful, but sadly, their dispute resolution service would not be available to the tenants. The DPS told the tenant that their deposit had been protected for the first 12-months of their tenancy, however, it was not protected for the next 12 months… more bizarrely, it was re-protected with the DPS the day AFTER the tenants moved out. A cynic might say that this was very intentional in a bid to hide their breach of the deposit protection law, whilst making unfair deposit deductions.

Armed with this information, Tenant Angels and our partner legal team secured the full return of the tenant’s deposit, plus over £2,000* on top as compensation for the breach of the tenancy deposit protection law.

Following the successful tenancy deposit claim, the tenant told us;

“As soon as we found out our deposit was no longer protected, we were very anxious and concerned that we’d just have to accept that we’d lose part of our deposit through no fault of our own.

I spoke with Citizens Advice who were able to give me very entry-level advice so I searched online and found Tenant Angels.

I was still very anxious at this stage as I’d never been through anything like this before and you just don’t know what to expect but I’d say to any tenant in the same situation as us, trust the process, be positive and see it through.

Tenant Angels provided a fantastic support system, I could speak to them whenever it suited, they were very warm and receptive – which is exactly what you need when you’re stressed and anxious.

It might be possible to make a tenancy deposit claim by yourself, but I wouldn’t want to. Tenant Angels and their solicitor can communicate the issue more comprehensively and sternly. The law on deposit protection is very black and white and our claim settled really fast which was great!”

*All claims are handled on a no-win, no-fee basis

** In order to protect the landlord’s identity and at the tenant’s wishes, specifics of this success story have been generalised and the tenant’s name and location remain anonymous.