Question

Applying to Court for Possession — Standard Procedure (England) | Deposits and Tenancy Deposit Schemes (England) | Preventing Controlling and Recovering Rent Arrears (England)

Can a tenant argue that one of the ground 8 months is the money held in the deposit?

2 Feb 2018 | 1 comment

It states in my AST agreement, under the deposit section that the return of the property and the keys need to be returned at the end of the tenancy. This as far as I understand it means that if the tenant fails to vacate and fails to hand in the keys, the deposit should not paid back to the tenant, at least not until he does leave and return the keys thus meeting his obligations under the AST.

In the case of a section 8, ground 8 (two months rent owed) – the tenant should surely not be able to argue that one of the month’s rent owed could be the unreturned deposit and try to use this argument as being only the one month owed and ground 8 being invalidated?

The deposit is surely, the deposit – held independently in the scheme until the tenant meets all obligations specified in the AST agreement?

Bearing this in mind, if the tenant fails to vacate and hands in the keys, could he successfully argue that only one months rent is unpaid by referring to the other month’s rent being equal to the amount held in the deposit?

Answer

1 Comment

  1. guildy

    You are correct that in any section 8 claim, the deposit is ignored at the time of the hearing. That is a matter for when they have vacated altogether.

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