I'm just back from the small claims court after suing my former landlord. Although there was no evidence, the judge upheld about £60 worth of deductions.

Even worse, he upheld the counterclaim the landlord made. Basically, we gave notice on the 30th, but moved out on the 22nd. Rent was due on the 16th, but we'd paid up to the 21st. Landlord witheld a weeks rent as well as a bunch of other deductions and returned a small token amount. Neither of us knew he was entitled to charge a month from a rent due date until after we complained about the small amount he returned, when he consulted a lawyer. For some reason, despite the fact that he returned money to us and said he was deducting a week's rent, this didn't count as written confirmation of the end of the tenancy in the eyes of the judge.

In future I think I'll not pay the last month's rent and not leave a forwarding address. Neither landlords, or the legal system, are be trusted it seems.

Hi there,

It's not fair is it? We do know that the notice period must be a month and the date needs to be on a rent day (it's either the day before or after but I forget). However, it's still terrrible and in effect can be nearly 2 months notice.

Did you have a AST and what did it say?

What deductions did the LL claim for and what proof did he use?

Sorry to hear this.

Kindest regards,

The AST was a joke. It was emailed to the landlord by a friend of his and made references to letting agents (there wasn't one) and inventory clarks (again, none) and when we took it to citizens advice they pretty much just laughed at it and encouraged us to sue him.

Deductions were for scorched lampshades that only held energy saving light bulbs and the cleaning of a carpet that had been givena damn good clean. No evidence was given other than our word against his.

As for the rent and notice, he had already written to us saying he had withheld a week's worth of rent and return money to us, but the judge didn't consider that to be written confirmation of early termination of the contract. The landlord only made noises about the full amount when he took legal advice when we threatened to sue. He hadn't known the law either!

Strikes me you are a victim of your own ignorance, regardless of a contarct the law remains enforceable and the law states that once a contract enters periods (month to month, week to week) you are required to give one period of notice if you intend to terminate (the LL needs to give two periods)

So if it is a monthly rental contract and the payment date which defines the start of the period is the 16th of the month, you need to give notice on or before the 15th to move out a month later. Give it on the day or the day after and you need to wait nearly two months. And no that is not unfair, it means the LL has time to find a new tenant which is why they rent the house in the first place

Also what on earth are you going to the small claims court for £60 and it sounds like you got off lighlty with your landlord withholding only one weeks rental they should have charges you three weeks

Landlord are not there to put a roof over your head, they are there to make money out of their investment; I suggest you consider that before threatening not to pay rent which out just cause.

Ever heard of principle?

Exact same thing happened to me back in my student days although it was a house I shared with 3 other students, and it was more money than £60.

Basically we each paid a deposit totaling about £1600, and the landlord withdrew £1300 in damages. Now when we moved in there was an inventory but we refused to sign it, and the place was an absolute s**t hole. Mould in the bathroom, manky carpets, furniture all broken. But we were students, and our standards to as if we were renting now was not the same.

So we moved out, and the landlord tried claiming that we were responsible for the damages in the house. Well I took him to court, and the judge ordered the landlord to pay back our full deposit. And this was primarily based on the fact that we did not sign the inventory.

My point entirely... principles! if you want LL's to abide by the law it is worth sticking to law yourself, I don't support corrupt LL's but neither do I support daft tenants (I am both a LL and a tenant), if you are wrong, by principle you are wrong. If you are right then you should go to court and get your money back but going to court for £60, what a waste of tax payers resources!

Maybe you should get the facts before you form an opinion. It was for over £500 of deductions, the judge only upheld £60 of them.

Secondly, the landlord had returned some money and entered the property, so a case of early termination was a reasonable one to argue.

Clearly principles aren't important to you, but then you are a landlord, aren't you? Do you vote labour by any chance?

Don't vote can't trust a single one of them... but not sure what you are worried about, it sounds like the court served you well and you got out without paying the full notice period. As it happens I am quite a nice landlord, treat others as your would expect to be treated yourself, thats my moto...

What do you mean? I did have to pay the full notice period.

My only comfort is that he had a lawyer to represent him at the hearing, and it must have cost him a fortune, especially with all the letters they kept sending us. He lost more than us, and he won't pull one like that again, especially as the judge called him a liar for his deductions.

I thought the full notice period would have taken you to the 16th of the following month? if you paid up to the 30th you did OK.

Also your title is misleading "No Inventory = No Deductions Is A Myth, I'm not impressed with the small claims court" sounds like the Court found fully in your favour with a couple of small execptions, why are you not impressed. Sounds like your LL was a plonker for trying to rip you off. You should try my landlord, she has tried to take the last tenants for nearly £15,000 of made up dilapidations and even went to court, surprise surprise the Judge just laughed and they got their full £3000 deposit back.

She had classics such as replating 25 year old gold plated taps £800, sanding and resealing floor floor boards £4,000, re-decorating £4,800, "emergency gardening" £1,200, changing the batteries in mains powered smokes alarms (i.e. no batteries) £160

I am expecting to have to go to court to get my deposit back although I am going to do what you suggest and hold back the last two months rent.

If you had told us the full story in your first post we would have realised how successful you had been

We've now paid up to the 16th thanks to the damn judge, even although he deducted money from our deposit to the 30th and returned over a hundred pounds, and entered the house on the 23rd (is that trespass?). This was largely covered by the original deductions, most of which were made up, as he was forced to admit in court. He only pursued the extra rent when we chased our deposit, it was his way of bullying us into backing down.

We're sending the cheque to his lawyer, as the last letter we got from them asked us to stop sending everything to the landlord and to send it to the lawyer instead. I gues they'll charge him for forwarding it

I always find it odd that people seem to be fleeced by the land lord.

I am in my third rented property and I have had 1 deposit returned intact (Country Wide Residential Lettings) and my seconf deducted £50 (Private Lanlord), £30 for carpet cleaning and £20 for lino for the kitchen. I was a bitter, however we did damage the lino and I failed to clean the beige Living room carpet. But now I accept it and don't feel ripped off.

I think if you look after the place and clean it when you leave, you normally get most if not all your deposit back.

We scrubbed the carpets. Despite this, the landlord charged us £110 for a professional clean. In court it came out that this was based on a quote and didn't happen.

How the hell am I supposed to avoid that?

I just gave up on the cleaning thing. No point in paying twice or spending hours scrubbing. Just get a price before you leave and tell them to deduct it. The place I'm in now has "professionally cleaned on exit" requirement and yet I was told quite openly that the previous tenant hadn't done it "but it's good enough". I then wiped my finger across the top of the kitchen cabinets and displayed the several years of greasy dust build-up and asked if that would be good enough when I left. The inventory bint got quite shirty about me correcting the inventory, which was clearly way above my station as a renter.

Or you could just not pay the last months rent, leave it clean and not give a forwarding address.

Seeing as I pay by standing order, so they know my bank details, am not interested in gathering complaints to my name and my deposit is greater than one month's rent, I'll stick with my plan.

How do they know your bank details if you pay by standing order?