Deposit Protection Claims from Solicitors
Have you received a solicitor letter demanding thousands for not protecting a tenants deposit?
One business sector, in particular, has opted to jump on this new money making scheme. Ambulance chasing No Win No Fee solicitors are terrorising landlords with letters demanding thousands of pounds for allegedly not protecting tenants deposits.
However, these solicitors have little or no housing law knowledge and in many cases are simply claims farmers rather than legitimate legal professionals. I have been appalled by the aggressive tone of the letters sent to landlords with no real grounds to prove a landlord has done wrong or not!
If you have received one of these letters, please DO NOT RESPOND until you have contact me.
I have successfully challenged these extortionate claims and saved landlord thousands that they did not owe in the first place.
Compensation Claim £19,520
Result: Landlord paid £0.00
This claim was against 1 landlord who has 3 separate single let properties. The solicitor was claiming that the deposit was not protected and no Prescribed information issued, in addition they claimed that when the 3 tenancies went periodic there was another breach. This was not the case, I wrote one letter to the law firm clearly explaining the law and their misunderstanding of it…
Compensation Claim £3,500
Result: Landlord paid £950
In this instance, the landlord had NOT protected the deposit, but there were mitigating circumstances as the landlord prior to renting the annex of his property had sort professional advice and been told the property was not a separate dwelling and he was a resident landlord. This sadly was not the case. We settled with the law firm for 1.5x value of the deposit, a much more realistic result
Compensation Claim £32,500
Result: Landlord paid £0.00
This was the highest claim i have seen so far. Thankfully the solicitor was clueless when it came to housing law. The 8 tenancies the claim was for related to the same tenant for the same dates for 8 separate flats. On further investigation, it was revealed that the tenant was actually a R2R operator, so even though the Landlord issued the AST, in fact what they actually had was a management agreement for the 8 flats. 1 letter to the solicitor pointing out that law and how ASTs work…..and we never heard from them again
Compensation Claim £10,500
Result: Landlord paid £650
This was a claim from a tenant still in occupation who had responded to a social media advert from the No Win No fee solicitor firm. The tenant had paid a deposit for a shared house, the landlord protected the deposit and issued all the correct documents. The tenants ended up moving into a different property owned by the same landlord. The landlord never unprotected the deposit but also didn’t change the details for the new property. The solicitor was claiming that the deposit was not protected for the 1st AST, and as that 1st AST was a 6month fixed term, a breach had occurred when the tenancy became periodic. The solicitor continued to claim, that the periodic tenancy renewed every 6 months, creating 4 renewed periodic tenancies. 1 longish letter to the solicitor pointing out the very clear continuation clause of the original fixed term, a detailed explanation of difference between Contractual and Statutory periodic and a reminder that a judge would look for the penalty to fit the crime, and here the deposit had remained protected throughout, just with the wrong address…. The solicitor accepted the return of the £650 deposit as full settlement
This landlord has received a letter demanding 6 x the deposit value for not protecting the deposit at the start of the tenancy and then for not protecting it when the tenancy went periodic.
After looking at the tenancy it was clear the original AST had become a Contractual periodic and as the full deposit has been been returned to the tenant, there was no actually material loss here. There was the original breach for non-protection at the start of the tenancy, which we stated would only
Read my article for British Landlord association on this growing trend
Contact Us
If you have had a claim letter, get in touch. Do Not reply to them straight away
Email us at advice@gothardrowe.com
Deposit protection.
Deposit protection only applies to assured shorthold tenancies (AST)
An AST can only be issued to an individual ( not a company) and it must be their main or principle home
If the above doesn’t apply then it is likely the claim is incorrect
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