It's cool, I'm apparently a slumlord.
I did tell you that landlords can’t decide how much (or all) of the tenant deposits they can keep as that was stopped in 2007, but that part of the Housing Law changes only affects those who are doing this. Too many ex tenants raising a dispute against a landlord, would likely mean that landlord will not be allowed to take a deposit again, from any future tenant. That addition to the Housing laws also meant that changed the Section 21 too with many landlords who abused that process, finding their S21 was now invalid.
Prior to that law change in 2007, the forums were always full of the professional landlords encouraging a tenant to take their landlord to court if they unfairly kept thier deposit. Those tenants who had already seen how easy it was to take an ex landlord to court, also helped. Then the insurance companies brought out low cost policies that gave the tenants full legal fees cover to take a landlord to court/defend action against a landlord. All this clogged the courts and the law was changed to protect the tenants.
Landlords’ in England are required to know the law, not their Letting Agent. It’s the landlord that commits the offence and some have now been made a criminal offence. Scotland and Wales have their own laws for landlords.
Abuse always gets the laws changed and the Housing laws are not an exception. As usual when laws have to be brought in to end abuse from some, it often affects those who were not carrying out that abuse.
Look at the other thing we are talking about here. As the government said when they decided to launch the Welfare Reform Bills, there are many women who return to work when their child is age one and keep their own children, but these then have to pay for the children of the able bodied parents who abuse the Welfare System. A few years ago there were discussions on the internet on how to get around this part of the proposed welfare changes for the self employed, but that just enabled the government to shut that down too before it began and bring that in as part of the Welfare Reform Bill.
The Welfare Refomr Bill is now an Act and these reforms are now being rolled out across the country. This new law has been known for years because a Bill takes so long to go through Parliament and the Lords for their approval to make the Welfare Refrorm BIll an Act , so I had just assumed that everyone already knew this was changing and didn't realise it would be a shock.
The sad thing is that many of the changes that have had/having to be brought in due to abuse, for immigration too, were put there as safety nets for the genuine people, but instead have now had to be shut down.