Comments on: Tenancy deposit arbitrations – why landlords keep losing

By: Evan Price

Evan Price — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:23:04 +0000

This is not legal advice and should not be treated as such. My instinct is that a serious difficulty with such a challenge is that you would have to show that there was a serious irregularity with the award under s.68 (I think?). My initial reaction is that would be quite difficult to do as the purpose of the act is to reduce/elminate the need for litigation – an alternative would be some serious failure of understanding in relation to the law (which is unlikely as most of this sort of dispute is fact sensitive).

So anyone starting proceedings after an award would start at least 15 love down!

By: Tessa Shepperson

Tessa Shepperson — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:29:29 +0000

In one of the comments to this post here, it was suggested that unhappy landlords could challenge arbitration's under the Arbitrations Act. What do you think?

By: Evan Price

Evan Price — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:24:59 +0000

As a landlord who failed to retain as much as he hoped from a deposit throught the DPS arbitration system, I have simply decided that I will sue for every other deposit retention and take my chances in court.

The evidence put forward by the tenant would not, in my view, have satisfied a judge, but it did satisfy the arbitrator … and I have some reason to have confidence in that I am a barrister who practising in property related litigation including landlord and tenant law.

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 16:08:42 +0000

The sad thing is that the people who are going to pay for the damage are the tenants who leave a clean and undamaged property.

The other question that will be interesting to discover is whether the Inland Revenue are going to agree with 60% depreciation on carpets over 3 years.

I wish!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 08:38:20 +0000

Whilst I agree with much of the sentiment, should the adjudicators not be using a civil level of evidence, on the balance on probabilities, rather than what it often appears, "beyond all doubt"! After all if the case was taken to court instead of the adjudication that is what the landlord would have to prove.