The end of a tenancy is where deposit disputes surface, usually over cleaning, damage, or a deposit the tenant discovers was never protected in the first place. Knowing the rules puts you in a much stronger position.
Your deposit should have been protected
If you have an assured shorthold tenancy, your landlord must protect your deposit in a government-approved scheme within a set period of receiving it, and give you prescribed information about where it is held. This is not optional.
The penalty for not protecting it
A landlord who fails to protect a deposit, or fails to provide the required information, can be ordered to repay it and to pay a penalty of between one and three times its value. This is one of the most commonly overlooked tenant rights, and it applies regardless of whether there was any actual dispute about the deposit itself.
What can be deducted
- Cleaning — but only to return the property to the condition it was in at the start, evidenced by a proper inventory. Not to a higher standard.
- Damage — beyond fair wear and tear. A worn carpet at the end of a long tenancy is wear; a burn in it is damage.
- Unpaid rent — legitimately deductible.
Fair wear and tear
This is the deterioration you would expect from normal use over the length of your tenancy, taking into account how many people lived there. A landlord cannot charge you to replace a worn item with a brand new one — that is betterment, and it is not recoverable.
How to challenge deductions
If your deposit is in a protection scheme, that scheme offers a free adjudication process. Submit your evidence — the inventory, check-out report, photographs and correspondence — and an adjudicator decides. The decision on the disputed amount is binding, it costs nothing, and it usually resolves in a few weeks.