Thanks Sirius. She was saying she needed to do these inspections for the agency who takes our rent/deposit and I think she is going overboard because of a bad experience with them.
Well welcome to her, to the world of being a landlord. Landlords expect to get a bad experience at some time with a bad tenant and that is all built into their business plan: if they know what a business plan is. For those landlords that haven't bothered to learn the laws; some of which are criminal; that bad experience could be with the council or police, because letting agents in England are not the ones who are required to know the laws of the letting business.
Her bad experience still doesn’t mean that she can ignore the law. The law in England is quite clear; every tenant has the right of quite enjoyment of their home.
She no longer takes tenants who are on housing benefit,
That always makes me LOL when a landlord says this-
1. It’s called LHA. HB is for those in social housing.
2. They might not be on LHA but they could be on lots of other benefits and use those to pay the rent. They could have so many other benefits that they have too much for HB/LHA as the UK brought in a benefit cap.
3. The benefit agencies do not tell a tenant if the landlord claims/starts claiming benefits, just as they don't tell the landlord if the tenant does, because England has Data Protection laws.
and was very frustrated because the previous tenant left a mess too (she had cancer and needed to move back with family without much notice, I'm sure it wasn't her intention to leave a mess).
This is all part of being a landlord and is her sob story to tell, but it's not your problem. It could have been that she was a bad landlord and the tenant decided to do that: there is no point in throwing good money after bad in the courts if the tenant doesn't have much money.
If it was a mess, then that is what a deposit is for. A landlord might find out the hard way that they can’t take what they want from a tenants deposit as those days are gone and they could now lose the chance to ever take a deposit again. It’s not like before, when the tenant had to take the landlord to court (if they could be bothered) and the landlord could keep being taken to court by every tenant, even if they lost, as there was no limit to the doing this.
Under these new laws, a tenant should never warn the landlord that they are putting in a Dispute with the deposit scheme because this just gives a bad landlord the chance to back down and then try it on with the next tenant. It's easy to raise a dispute and tenants should not fear this as this scheme was brought in to protect them; driven in by the good landlords and the charities.
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In Scotland and Wales, they can prevent a landlord from letting out their property/properties.
Do you know where the definition for reasonable wear and tear is? I'm only concerned she'll try to charge us for that. If I find a job we are happy staying here until we can afford a house, so this was more annoying than anything.
In England, tenant has to behave in a tenant like manner, which means, tenant finds something that needs a repair, informs the landlord (in writing for tenant’s protection) because if they don’t and that repair gets worse, tenant is liable for the extra cost. Once the landlord or letting agent is aware of the repair, additional costs due to delay, the landlord has to pay. If the landlord has their property in a poor state and that is causing damage, make sure you tell them in writing. If it doesn’t get fixed, then ask the council to inspect the property as councils now deal with the bad landlord. Tenants are no longer the ones who have to take a bad landlord to court when they break the contract/law.
Your landlord was required by law to give you the Prescribed Information, in the prescribed manner. By law in England and Wales, they had 30 days to put your deposit in one of the government backed schemes. You can either look on that Prescribed Information to see which scheme they used and then look on their site for that guide on fair wear and tear, or you can look for Trading Standards guides on fair wear and tear.
These are the sites for the 3 Teancy Deposit protection schemes for England-
https://www.tenancydepositscheme.com/https://www.mydeposits.co.uk/https://www.depositprotection.com/Don’t forget that if you paid more than 5 weeks deposit, under the new Tenant Fees law that starts on 1 June 2019, any deposit held over 5 weeks will likely have to be returned. I think this return will have to happen because when the deposit protection scheme law came in, some landlords argued that a renewal of a tenancy agreement meant that they didn't have put the deposit in a scheme and could still keep that in their own account. Some were taken to court for failing to place the deposit in one of the new schemes and the courts ruled that a renewal is a new contract and the landlords had to pay 3 times the deposit to the tenant as the fine and give the deposit back (the landlord couldn't have deposit for the rest of that tenancy).
