Question

Deposits and Tenancy Deposit Schemes (England)

desposit protection scheme

23 Jun 2017 | 1 comment

i dint put my tenants deposit in a scheme in 2014 as being ill and receiving cancer treatment and it got overlooked, my tenant and the housing who pay her rent now want to no where it is i no i am in the wrong and will have to pay compensation as soon as i realised i paid it in yesterday
trouble is they had a 6 month tenancy oct4 to april 15 then resigned from april15 to oct 15 then never signed again so it went to periodic tenancy i think
last year the tenant and her partner split up so she just lives in the house now and pays rent or housing pay it for her
the house is dirty we have to ask them to cut the grass etc and they get it as a favor at under market rent

please help what can i do next to sort this still very ill and money is tight

Answer

1 Comment

  1. guildy

    The problem is that at the moment despite you protecting the deposit, you still can’t ask them to leave using the section 21 notice (the simplest notice to use which is at least 2 months).

    The only way you can now serve this notice is to return the deposit in full or, have a written agreement with the tenants to deduct from money owed (for example if there were rent arrears).

    Therefore, in our view, the best thing to do would be to return the deposit in full. That would at least allow you to serve a section 21 notice. You could wait until you need to get them out (should that ever arise) and then return but the advantage of getting on with it now is that they are likely to accept it without trouble.

    Otherwise, you could do a new tenancy and protect under the new tenancy. However, that doesn’t help with the penalty so there’s not really much gain for you. Also, given the problems your having with them, you probably don’t want to be tied into another term with them. That’s why returning is a better option in our view.

    Please see here for details of late protection.

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