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Can a tenants deposit be withheld due to a disagreement with another tenant?

December 9, 2015 by Tessa J Shepperson

housesHere is a question to the blog clinic from Alex (not his real name) whose daughter is a tenant

My daughter’s tenancy has been terminated but the landlord is unwilling to return her deposit due to another tenant staying at the property (with their own tenancy agreement and also terminated) is disputing their proportion of the deposit return amount. Each party had their own contract.

My daughter has agreed the outstanding fees for owed rent and the wear and tear amounts.

Can the landlord withhold her deposit until the other party has agreed the amount.

Background
Both tenants moved in at the same time with separate agreements and deposits, however the other tenant moved out prior to the end of the contract and my daughter had to find another person to supplement the other tenant leaving for a short period of time. The third tenant stayed at the property with no tenancy agreement.

Answer

If your daughter has her own tenancy agreement and has paid her own deposit I can’t see what the other tenants deposit has to do with it.

So no, it is not a justification for withholding the money.

I also can’t see why your daughter had to help finding a replacement tenant when the other tenant left. Unless she was doing it out of the goodness of her heart. So far as I can tell from what you have said, she had no legal obligation to do this.

If she has her own tenancy agreement for her own room and deposit and the other tenant has his own tenancy agreement and deposit for his room, these should be dealt with entirely separately.

She should get in touch with the tenancy deposit scheme which is protecting her deposit and ask their advice. There are procedures which tenants can follow to claim their deposit from the scheme when the landlord is unco-operative.

It might be an idea for her to request that the matter be referred to adjudication anyway as she should not have to pay for damage due to fair wear and tear.

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About Tessa J Shepperson

Tessa is a specialist landlord & tenant lawyer and the creator of this site! She is a director of Landlord Law Services which runs Landlord Law and Easy Law Training.

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Comments

  1. Ben Beadle says

    December 9, 2015 at 8:07 AM

    Like Tessa, I can’t see why if you have a separate tenancy agreement to others I the house, why you are being treated as though it is a joint tenancy. Raise this with the landlord/agent and raise a dispute if you don’t get anywhere.

    Ben Beadle
    Director of Customer Relations
    TDS

  2. NRM says

    December 9, 2015 at 11:01 AM

    Hmmmm what I often find, is that agents or L/L’s while giving separate contracts to several tenants in a house (HMO?), will then go and protect the deposit jointly rather than individually, which as you have now found complicates things needlessly.

    Also, the deductions may be for communal areas which the tenants will share responsibility for?

    But yes, Alex’s daughter had no responsibility to find a replacement under this agreement.

  3. Rent Rebel says

    December 9, 2015 at 12:58 PM

    Well, on first impression – it sounds like the landlord is just trying it on. But how was it lodged? As NRM says: too many individual deposits are just getting lumped as one – and while landlords are still at liberty to call these decisions tenancy deposit schemes will continue to let their tenants down. It makes for untold hassle if/when this happens.

  4. Tessa Shepperson says

    December 9, 2015 at 1:31 PM

    Yes I agree, it is very unfortunate when landlords do this. It should be outlawed but I don’t think the legislation as currently drafted would have this effect.

    There is a lot of merit in a scheme where tenants have the responsibility of protecting the deposit themselves rather than the landlord doing it, however, no doubt this would carry its own problems,

  5. Jamie says

    December 9, 2015 at 2:07 PM

    Would it have to be a legislative change? The scheme operators could probably just change their rules to take this into account.

  6. Industry Observer says

    December 9, 2015 at 3:46 PM

    I find this question confusing but I assume we are not talking same accommodation with two agreements on it in different names?

    In which case the short answer is NO.

    Same thing happens when management is transferred from one agent to another and the losing agent tries to deeduct fees due to them (allegedly) from the Landlord from the tenant’s deposit, and transfer the net amount leaving the Landlord to make up the shortfall to the new agent.

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