Landlord is refusing to return my deposit, claiming he’ll counter sue if we go to small claims
Slightly complicated one his:
In April last year a cleaner I hired for my rented flat managed to pull my tap from the sink and caused a significant flood. She did nothing to stop the flow of water, passed a garbled message to the agency who contacted my wife to say that the cleaner couldn’t turn the tap off (my wife said it’s easy, it’s a tap, turn it, let me know if there’s any issue and didn’t hear back) and left the property with water spraying everywhere. The resulting flood caused a significant amount of damage to the floor and the kitchen, ultimately resulting in about 14k of damage. We weren’t insured so we chased the cleaning company for damages - as we had hired a company that had in turn hired another agency the insurance for the umbrella company blamed the contractors they had hired, the contractor’s insurance blamed the umbrella company.
Eventually we got bored with this route and decided to leave the flat for unrelated reasons. I asked the landlord to claim on his buildings insurance and we’d refund him the cost of the excess and the increase in premiums. I’d then take those damages to the cleaning company. He agreed and when the deposit company emailed us both about the deposit he said he’d keep all the deposit and then when the insurance had gone through refund me it all except for the above. I neither agreed nor disagreed to this email.
I then didn’t hear from him for 4 months despite frequent texts asking about the insurance claim and the deposit so I sent him an official letter before action outlying my position. He replied with a list of stuff about his valuable time (£200 an hour he reckons!) being wasted dealing with the damage, about damage to the walls from smoking (I’ve never smoked in that flat) resulting in repainting being necessary (necessary anyway due to a sewage leak from the upstairs flat which is also owned by my landlord) and the fact that we used the same company to do the end of tenancy cleaning (true although we didn’t know they were the same company until it was too late to cancel as they were using a different name and anyway it’s of questionable relevance). He says he’ll counter sue for all this should we go to court.
Because of all the delays on his end it’s too late to use the deposit adjudication service.
The deposit was £2550 - my question is do I have a good case and is it worth getting a lawyer to represent me in small claims?
Posted Aug 22, 2018, 9:19 AM UTC
This is a slightly complicated issue, so I do think consulting a solicitor (find one who specialises in landlord/tenant disputes) would be sensible.
Personally, I think you do have a good case to get all of your money back from the landlord except the insurance excess (and can then go on to claim this from the cleaning company). In my view, your agreement with the landlord is that this would cover all the costs associated with the kitchen sink incident.
If the landlord wishes to claim more money from you for unrelated incidents, then the normal rules regarding tenancy deposits apply (even if it is too late to go through the adjudication service). That is, the money is to be treated as yours (and therefore returned to you in full) unless the landlord can demonstrate, on the balance of probability, that you caused the damage.