Tenant seeking compensation following a bed bug infestation

[JN001]

Hi,

I am wondering if anybody could give me some advise on the following:

I have a 4 bedroom flat in Harrow, London, rented to the current tenants since 29th September 19 under an AST agreement.

I have appointed the letting agent to manage the property for me and on 30th Jan 20 I received a call to inform me that one of the tenants had made a complaint about a bed bug infestation in her room..

I gave the go ahead for a pest controller to visit the property and carry out treatment without delay.

The pest controller visited the property, said "the room was not overly infested but need to be treated before it got worse", he informed the tenant that they could not stay in the room while the treatment was carried out and that this would take a 10 day period.

The treatment has now been carried out , the tenant stayed in an Air B&B while the treatment was ongoing.

The tenant has now claimed that she first noticed bites in mid-October but had only reported this to her parents at the time, and not to the letting agent. She has forwarded photos and text messages to the letting agent that seem to support the fact she had received bites by Nov 30th 2019.

At the time of the pest treatment the tenants father became involved in the correspondence over and back between the letting agent and the tenant.

He went into detail to explain that there was no way( in his opinion) that his daughter could have brought the bed bugs into the room, and that they must have been present before she arrived.

He made a request that his daughter be reimbursed the cost of her accommodation for the 10 days, the cost for her to launder her clothes(as recommended by the pest controller) , and compensation for her trauma and suffering for the period this has been going on.

I responded to the letting agent to say that I had no intention of offering compensation of any sort, from my point of view if the problem existed in Oct/Nov19 then it should have been reported to the letting agent so that it could have been dealt with before it became a major issue. I also highlighted that although the tenants father outlined in detail that his daughter could not possibly have brought the bed bugs into the room , in my opinion there are many ways in which the bed bugs could have been introduced to the room in the time of her tenancy, like a friend visiting or returning from a trip etc.

There had been no reports of bed bugs from the previous tenants and when informed of the issue I instructed the treatment to go ahead immediately.

The tenant's father has since responded back to say he has sought legal advise from 3 separate practices and that they have told him he has a strong case against me. He states:

"The presiding advice being that landlords are legally obligated to provide habitable living conditions and there is no reasonable grounds to ascertain that the tenant brought the bed bugs with her from her previous residence.

Compensation claim calculators seem to indicate potential claims ranging from £6,700 to £97,500 depending on the severity of the bites and whether the bites result in permanent scaring."

He goes on to make a settlement offer of £3140 based on the 5 months rent she had paid to date plus the cost of her 10 days accommodation and the cost to launder her clothes.

From my point of view I feel I have acted perfectly reasonably by instructing the bed bug issued be dealt with as soon as it was brought to my attention and I fail to see what grounds the tenant or her father would have to bring a case against me.

Does anyone have any experience of a similar situation or have any advise on how I should proceed?

Thank you in advance.

[R0b]

You should get some legal advice from a personal injury lawyer, if you have any legal expenses cover you might want to start with that and get advice that way.

The father is of course going to take the daughter's side and I would agree that the father making a blanket statement that the bed bugs couldn't have possibly come from your daughter isn't going to hold much sway in court. These types of cases are probably down to the facts themselves and who has the best evidence/argument on the day.

If you can show that the property was thoroughly checked prior to the new tenant moving in then that will probably assist you in defending this. I can understand that she might not wanted to have informed the letting agent immediately, and perhaps wanted to inspect or be double certain before raising the issue, but what isn't clear is when she actually reported the problem. If she became aware by 30 November then she should have reported it immediately or within a very short window of becoming aware - you may want to check with the letting agent when they first received notice of it because if they have been siitting on it then it looks like the majority of your compensation ought to be against the agent, not the tenant.

Of course if she only informed the agent in January then questions have to be asked why has she left it and that would warrant a deduction in any compensation for contributing to the problem.

Also bear in mind, personal injury compensation amounts are limited to £1,000 on the smal claims track so anything above that will require them to comply with the Pre-action Protocols on Personal Injury Claims, that's assuming no lawyer is acting on their behalf.

Speaking of lawyers, if their case is so strong, why hasn't the daughter instructed a law firm to get things moving since they will be able to do it on a no win-no fee basis. There could be a plausible explanation for this but based on what you've said, I wouldn't say it's an open and shut case at all. The onus will be on the daughter to prove that those bed bugs were existent at the time she started the tenancy.

A witness statement from the previous tenant would probably go a long way to help you defend it.