Why is it so hard for tenants to hold their landlords to account?

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I should have guessed there was something dodgy about the letting agent of my rented flat in London’s Bethnal Green the day the boiler caught fire. Or the time it took them two weeks to send pest control to remove the two decomposing rats from our U-bend. Call it stoicism or learned indifference to the horrors of London renting, but I didn’t find either surprising.

It was only when moving out of the studio flat I shared with my partner — after spending days on our hands and knees meticulously cleaning skirting boards and degreasing the oven, only to be told £185 would be deducted from our deposit for “cleaning fees” — that we lost our patience.

When we had moved in two years earlier, the kitchen cupboards still contained the previous tenant’s crockery, mail and paperwork. It certainly didn’t look freshly cleaned. We were just two of the thousands of tenants in London with an absentee landlord. We could only communicate via our letting agent, which left me wondering whether either we or the landlord were receiving the service we expected.

I asked for evidence that the cleaning had been carried out. When I received the invoice from “the accounts team”, I received the name of the supposed cleaning company. So I did what any financial journalist would do. I checked Companies House.

The listed director of the cleaning company: our letting agent. The person deducting money from our deposit would profit from those deductions

The company was listed as an “unspecified construction company” which sounded amusingly vague, and was registered to a Shoreditch co-working space. Impeccably anonymous. The listed director: our letting agent. The person arguing to deduct money from our deposit would seem to be profiting from those deductions.

It would be fair to argue that £185 is not a significant sum of money to dispute, which is why so many London tenants do not. According to campaign group Generation Rent, “only one in five tenants facing unreasonable deductions challenge them through tenancy deposit schemes but those that do have a two in three chance of getting a good outcome”.

There is confusion, according to Generation Rent’s deputy director Dan Wilson Craw, over how cleaning fees can be charged under the 2019 Tenant Fees Act. While the Act prohibits landlords from requiring their tenants to pay for professional cleaning when they move out, the property should be returned in the same condition as when the tenants moved in. 

However, proving what state the property was in can prove complicated. While tenants can challenge charges at tribunal, deposit deductions are adjudicated through tenancy deposit schemes — and the two, Wilson Craw says, “have different interpretations of the law”.

Keith Ellwood, a former tenant in Devon, says his worst experience with a landlord involved attempting to retrieve his £800 deposit during a Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. After five years at the property, Ellwood confronted the landlord over letting a workman into the property while Ellwood’s fiancée was alone in bed, resting after treatment for cancer. Neither tenant had been made aware of the appointment. The landlord’s response: “It’s my property. I’ll come and go as I please.”

Ellwood’s deposit had been protected by the My Deposits scheme, one of three UK government schemes intended to protect tenants’ deposits alongside the Deposit Protection Service (DPS) and Tenancy Deposit Scheme (TDS). My Deposits represents more than 400,000 landlords and protects £1.3bn of tenants’ deposits across the UK. 

Due to the pandemic, “it was impossible to get hold of anyone” to obtain documents associated with his tenancy, Ellwood says. During the delay, his landlord claimed he had already paid for cleaning and maintenance to the property but refused to “produce any receipts to back up his claims,” says Ellwood.

After weeks of negotiations, Ellwood agreed to a deduction to his deposit to cover the cost of cleaning, but his estate agents still didn’t respond. When he turned to the tenancy deposit scheme to resolve the stalemate, he was told that due to the delay, he had lost his right to arbitration and the landlord had taken the entire deposit.  

“I had no way to claim this back, other than taking legal action I could not afford. I tried Citizens Advice, Shelter and the local and county council with no luck. To this day I am angry that there is no way to hold unscrupulous landlords to account without costly legal fees.”

My Deposits says that “tenants are informed of the procedures and timescales for the deposit release and resolution at the time the deposit is protected” and “the scheme may allow additional time only if suitable evidence and reasons are given for the cause of delay.”

Nollienne Alparaque of OTS Solicitors, which offers landlord and tenant litigation, says when a tenancy ends the tenant has three months to dispute any deductions made. As most deposits are less than £10,000, these disputes can go to small claims court. However, Alparaque says, it’s not always cost effective: “You don’t get any legal costs back [from small claims court]”. 

Alparaque concludes “I find myself time and time again with tenants who have been done wrong but you’ve got to put it in a cost perspective. I can help you but it’s going to cost.”

As for myself, I’m taking some time away from London renting in the possibly delusional hope of amassing a house deposit. While the commuter train has its downsides, I certainly don’t miss eau de rat cadaver wafting from the bathroom.

Leah Quinn is the FT’s parliamentary editorial assistant

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