Student Accomodation problem help!!

[silverbreak]

My daughter is starting 2nd year at Uni and with 4 other students is renting private accomodation.

They signed a tenancy agreement in June (unseen)

and tenancy appears to have started 1st July for 12 months. However none of the students have moved in yet and the property is not yet fully furnished although term will start soon. The landlord has been carrying out various works during the summer and during this time property has been unavailable for occupation. The students have been paying 'half' rent for this period.

On visiting property yesterday my daughter has found unopened mail including default notices for utilities charged since end of June. Landlord says 'not his resposibility'. Can anyone advise any areas I can look at in relation to this problem? eg are they tenants if they have no right of access to property? Conversely if they are deemed as tenants from 1st July then shouldn't Landlord still pay utilities as he is the only one who has used them? Any advice please?

[Surfer01]

Unfortunately they are responsible for utilities since date of start of tenancy and not the LL unless they had negotiated a deal prior to signing the tenancy. How much are the bills as maybe they can ask for a split for thsioe few months?

[silverbreak]

Unfortunately they are responsible for utilities since date of start of tenancy and not the LL unless they had negotiated a deal prior to signing the tenancy. How much are the bills as maybe they can ask for a split for thsioe few months?

Yes i thought that might be the case. In fact because they are not yet in occupation it had got to the stage of one of the utility companies issuing a County court proceedings notice. This one I have dealt with and got the company to issue a 'void' property notice. The next one I'm trying to sort is the electricity bill - bearing in mind they are not in occupancy, then there should be minimal use of electricity but apparently this is not the case. The landlord as I say has been carrying out substantial repairs etc during the summer and using basically a utility which isn't his to use? He can't surely have it both ways? He cant on the one hand tell them they are responsible for bills whilst on the other hand deny them occupation of the property and run up large bills on their behalf?

[MrShed]

When did the tenants take possession of the keys for the property? This may not be as cut and dry as it initially looks.