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I’m helping my son and his two friends claim back the deposit from their student rental house. The deposit was held with the DPS (Deposit Protection Scheme) but the landlords are refusing to release the deposit and will not agree to use the free dispute resolution service provided by the DPS.
We have tried to reach agreement with the landlords but are not getting anywhere. They will not negotiate and just want us to release the whole deposit. For our part, we feel that the best solution would be to use the DPS dispute resolution service. So we are at a stalemate.
The status on the DPS online system is “Claim in dispute – awaiting court order”.
What sort of court order do we need to get? The DPS themselves will not give us any guidance.
The small claims court (MCOL) would seem to be the easiest, and has the advantage of offering free mediation. However, my understanding is that they could make a financial award but wouldn’t issue a court order that we can send to the DPS. Is that correct?
If MCOL isn't appropriate, how do we go about getting a court order that we can send to the DPS to get them to release the money?
Alternatively, could we get a court order to force the landlords to use the DPS free resolution service? That would be perfectly acceptable to us.
The property is in Wales. Do we need to apply to the courts in Swansea, or can we do it at a local court to us?
Other info:
We have tried to reach agreement with the landlords but are not getting anywhere. They will not negotiate and just want us to release the whole deposit. For our part, we feel that the best solution would be to use the DPS dispute resolution service. So we are at a stalemate.
The status on the DPS online system is “Claim in dispute – awaiting court order”.
What sort of court order do we need to get? The DPS themselves will not give us any guidance.
The small claims court (MCOL) would seem to be the easiest, and has the advantage of offering free mediation. However, my understanding is that they could make a financial award but wouldn’t issue a court order that we can send to the DPS. Is that correct?
If MCOL isn't appropriate, how do we go about getting a court order that we can send to the DPS to get them to release the money?
Alternatively, could we get a court order to force the landlords to use the DPS free resolution service? That would be perfectly acceptable to us.
The property is in Wales. Do we need to apply to the courts in Swansea, or can we do it at a local court to us?
Other info:
- We have already released a small amount of the deposit for what we considered valid claims. £42 released, £996 remaining.
- The landlords are using very bullying tactics, which we know has succeeded in the previous two years with student tenants (the landlords are well-known to the university's Student Union Advice Centre due to previous complaints).
- We have asked for a concise list of claims, but they are just sending haphazard receipts, invoices and quotations, with no explanation, or allowance for wear and tear.
- They are claiming new for old, but without even proving they have purchased the items, and we doubt that they have. E.g. they are trying to claim for a new fridge freezer and sent us a printout from the Argos website, even though we have time-stamped photos to prove that the fridge freezer was second-hand at the start of the tenancy, and it was clean and working at the end of the tenancy.
- We doubt the validity of some of their receipts and invoices, e.g. one is for pest control treatment, where they booked and paid for a council visit, sent us the receipt and then cancelled the visit and got a refund! They don’t yet know that we know that. Other receipts appear to have been altered, are undated, or are simply handwritten with no supplier details.
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