No win no fee help for tenants whose landlords don’t protect their deposits

Announcing a new Landlord Law service : www.tenancydepositclaim.com.

About the tenancy deposits scheme

Since April 2007 landlords have been required to protect tenants deposits (for ASTs) in one of the three government authorised tenancy deposit schemes. This has largely infuriated landlords but there are a number of good reasons for it:

• The deposit money belongs to the tenant and not to the landlord
• Many landlords (not all but a substantial minority) were failing to return all or part of the deposit without proper justification
• When this happened, the only thing tenants could do was bring a County Court claim, but many people find the courts scary and intimidating
• The unjustified retention of their deposit was causing hardship, particularly when it was needed for a new tenancy

However under the new schemes the deposit money is protected, so that even if the landlord or agent holding the money becomes insolvent, the tenant will still get it back.  The schemes also come with a free arbitration service so that disputes regarding deductions from the deposit money can be independently assessed.

The problem now with tenancy deposits

Unfortunately it seems that many landlords are still not protecting deposits, despite that fact that they are usually aware the rules exist.

This is not only unfair on their tenants, it is also unfair on all the other landlords who are protecting deposits properly.

The tenancy deposit legislation may not be perfect, but it is the law. Landlords should not be allowed to pick and choose which regulations they will comply with. Often the landlords who fail to comply with the tenancy deposit legislation are also failing to comply with other legislation, and are generally the type of landlord which gives the whole landlording profession a bad name.

More practically, a landlords failure to protect the deposit means that if they then fail to return it unjustifiably (and often they do), their tenants don’t have access to the free arbitration service, and feel helpless to prevent their money being wrongly withheld. This is the very problem which the tenancy deposit legislation was set up to prevent.

Tenancy deposit scheme penalties

There are penalties included in the tenancy deposit legislation intended to deter landlords from flouting the legislation.

One of these is a penalty payment of three times the deposit sum, which a Judge will award if a claim is made to the County Court. However most tenants have no idea how to do this, cannot afford solicitors, and are scared of bringing a court claim without legal help.

The Landlord Law scheme

In order to help tenants in this situation, I am now able to offer the Landlord Law no win no fee tenancy deposit claim scheme. This operates as follows:

It is only available to tenants who have vacated the property.
In recent cases claims have failed where the landlord has protected the deposit before the tenants have issued proceedings. However this defence is not available where tenants are no longer living in the property.

It is only available where the landlord still owns the property.
The reason for this is that if the landlord fails to pay the award, a claim can be made to enforce the award against the property (so that both the sum awarded to the tenants and the solicitors costs will eventually be paid). This means, unfortunately, that our service will not be available where the landlords property has been repossessed by the mortgage company.

The service will be provided on a no win no fee basis.
So if your case is suitable, you will not have to make any up front payments, and will only have to pay solicitors costs if you win the claim.

For more information visit >> www.tenancydepositclaim.com.

You will also find a link to an application form.

Related posts:

1. Tenancy deposits, fed up landlords and a coach and horses
2. Tenancy deposits – the law that never was
3. Tenancy deposits – two recent cases