Arguably this was inevitable, but companies are now setting up with the specific intention of helping tenants make claims against their landlords, on a no win, no fee basis.
This relates to tenancy deposits. Since 2007, landlords (or their agents) have been required to register tenancy deposits and provide tenants with certain 'prescribed wording' in relation to that deposit. If this doesn't happen within a certain period of time, and the tenant goes to court, the automatic penalty is the landlord paying the tenant 3x the value of the deposit, plus the original deposit. The average deposit we hold is about £800, so that's £3200 a landlord would need to pay out.
This is scary, but manageable. As part of our standard service we register deposits and give out prescribed information. This is given to us by the deposit provider - in our case https://www.tds.gb.com/. Since 2007, we've never been caught out once for failing to get this right (yet!) and as such neither have our landlords.
The difficulty comes when individual courts start making strange decisions over tenancy deposits. One recent case seemed to suggest that prescribed information should be issued again when a tenancy moves from a fixed term to a periodic. This has never been mentioned previously, and has had the whole lettings industry (including the deposit scheme providers themselves) running round trying to figure out if they are compliant or they aren't. (http://bit.ly/147YrnW). In honesty they probably don't know until there are further test cases.
This relates to tenancy deposits. Since 2007, landlords (or their agents) have been required to register tenancy deposits and provide tenants with certain 'prescribed wording' in relation to that deposit. If this doesn't happen within a certain period of time, and the tenant goes to court, the automatic penalty is the landlord paying the tenant 3x the value of the deposit, plus the original deposit. The average deposit we hold is about £800, so that's £3200 a landlord would need to pay out.
This is scary, but manageable. As part of our standard service we register deposits and give out prescribed information. This is given to us by the deposit provider - in our case https://www.tds.gb.com/. Since 2007, we've never been caught out once for failing to get this right (yet!) and as such neither have our landlords.
The difficulty comes when individual courts start making strange decisions over tenancy deposits. One recent case seemed to suggest that prescribed information should be issued again when a tenancy moves from a fixed term to a periodic. This has never been mentioned previously, and has had the whole lettings industry (including the deposit scheme providers themselves) running round trying to figure out if they are compliant or they aren't. (http://bit.ly/147YrnW). In honesty they probably don't know until there are further test cases.
