Hello, iv just currently finished my 12 month contract with my landlord along with 4 other university students. Three of them are continuing to live there for another 12 months and myself and one other are leaving. I contacted my landlord regarding the deposit which was £2475 (£495 each) and he told me that we were in arrears amounting to £500 for about 6 weeks and that he is charging £390 out of each our deposits (£13 per tenant per week of the late payment so thats £65 a week) I thought this was abit excessive and unfair considering i have paid all my rent on time. when i challenged him on where the deposit was lodged he seemed uneasy and avoided the question on several occassions, before saying it was lodged with himself under the landlords association. After abit fo research i understand this is not possible. The contract states he was suppose to have lodged the deposit under mydesposits.co.uk however after checking it seems he hasnt lodged it. My landlord has sent a cheque in the post of £400 .. however not the full £495. Also i feel it is important to state that my housemate who deals with paying the landlord has stated that we are not in arears and he has bank statements to support this, also when i rung him again he changed the amount we owe to 220 so it all sounds abit dodgy to me. I think he will end up paying the full deposit to me however im abit peed off that hes tried to con me as im a student and as such dont know whether i should pursue a claim to sue him for 3x as much . WHAT SHOULD I DO? THANKS

Hi, Apologies if the info/advice I'm after is elsewhere on the site but I haven't been able to find anything definitive. I have a bank account with Abbey/Santander with defaulted in Feb 2006 as a result of charges applied to the account, I was making replayments prior to this and the settled the account (all through a DCA). I then made a claim for the charges later that year Aug 2006, which has since been stayed; am I correct in thinking that the account wasn't in dispute when the default was applied? If that is the case then what would be the best approach for getting the default removed i.e. can I still go down the default on a disputed account route or would I need to try another way? I have read the post here and it would seem that approach may be out of date. Any advice would be greatly appreciated Many thanks stevieb52

Hello everyone I hope someone can give me some advice on how to resolve a dispute we are having with our landlord and estate agent. Mid-July my girlfriend and I signed an Assured Shorthold Tenancy Agreement to rent a one bedroom flat with sole use of an external store room/study (outside flat but still in building) and sole use of a terrace. Since then everything has started to go wrong. The landlord came in the day after we signed the tenancy and removed the keys for the store room/study, post box and terrace. We returned to the property a few days later and found these keys missing so asked the estate agent to enquire as to where they had got to. The estate agent acquired the terrace keys and brought them round to the flat about a week later. About a week after this the estate agent came round again to remove some furniture that had been left in the flat, even though we let it unfurnished, so we asked about the remaining keys. They became very shirty and said that they were not even managing the property and they were doing us a favour in removing the furniture. Once we managed to calm them down they said that the landlord had posted the post box key to us! This was obviously a problem and we asked about the store room key, to which they did not give us an answer. This is a problem because the landlord has stated that she does not want to let us use the store room, even though it was advertised for our sole use and the estate agent has confirmed this in writing. Eventually the landlord conceded that we can share it with her but this is not what we agreed and now she is storing her belongings in there and will only let us have a key if we agree to her terms and go and get a copy cut (at our expense) from another estate agent she is trying to sell the property with. We rented the property under the assumption that we would have sole use of the store room as there is inadequate storage space within the flat. Additionally neither the estate agent nor the landlord is accepting responsibility for managing the property and we have contacted them stating that we no longer wish to live there and have tried to negotiate terminating the contract. They have flat out refused to negotiate and now want to take us to court. So: Do we have grounds to terminate contract due to misrepresentation and insufficient keys being provided? Are we obliged to get our own keys cut at our expense? Can the estate agent take us to court when the rent is paid directly to the landlord's bank account? Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated whether it is in our favour or not. Thanks in advance