Here is a question to the blog clinic from Jay who is a landlord:
Hi I protected the deposit within 14days with mydeposits but forgot to give them the certificate until the 6month of their 6month AST.
Can they claim 3xdeposit from me? the tenancy ended and they have left – damages have emerged which I hv informed them about and they are threatening me with the 3x rule. Are they right? Thanks Jay
If you have protected the deposit and the tenants have vacated then no, they are not able to claim the depsoit penalty from you. For the reason for this see this post here.
However things will change after April 2012when the amendments set out in the Localism Act come into force. Then if landlords have not protected the deposit AND provided the certificate, they will have no defence to a claim for the penalty after that time.
However this does not affect your current situation.
We await the transitional provisions and we are all presuming it will only apply to new deposits taken after introduction. However, I wonder if, like Scotland, they might use this opportunity to sweep up all existing AST deposits not covered in some way?
I have no information here, but I would strongly advise all landlords to ensure that they have protectd the deposit and served the certificate.
Better safe that sorry.
My goodness that can’t be right, seems like it’s awfully exposed to disputes. I was a landlord for some time until recently and have to say that 90-95% of my tenants were great but the few that leave you having to pay out leave a bad taste in your mouth and more than a few pennies out of pocket! Could definitely of benefited from finding this blog a few years ago, great work keep it up