Hello, I have been renting an apartment for the past year with a previous friend. We each paid a £500 deposit to cover a month's worth of rent (£1000 in total) . Long story short, my flatmate failed to make two of her rent payments so the landlord is trying to claim back the whole deposit to cover each of the £500 she failed to give him. We are on a joint tenancy so I understand the landlord has the right to do this as technically we were both liable for the rent even though I paid all of my 'half', however the question I have is do I have any chance of seeing my £500 again? The deposit is currently in the deposit protection scheme where my landlord has requested the full amount back. Should I go into a dispute even though I know I would probably loose? The only small thing I have on my side is that my landlord was not a very good one and we had issues with the flat when we moved in that were never resolved even though I emailed him several times that I have records of (the shower leaked so badly it caused a damp patch on the ceiling of the apartment below, the drains smelled of sewage, the blinds in the bathroom were mouldy). Would this give me any leg to stand on in claiming a bit of the money back or is this not worthy to get some of the deposit back? In terms of my flatmate we are no longer in contact however I have messaged her several times asking her to pay at least one month of the rent so I could get my deposit back at least, to no avail. She already has a lot of debt against her name (unpaid loans, unpaid phone bills ect.) so is there any chance I could claim my lost £500 from her another way or would going through the courts be a waste of time due to her previous unpaid debts she hasn't repaid. I know I was silly signing a joint tenancy with her but hindsight is a beautiful thing and now I'm just trying to look for a way to resolve it and get a part, if not all of my money back!

I think the heating may be the issue. We are in an old converted building with only signal glazing and we do. Or have central heating so have two heaters that we have in our room. My room is fairly small though and heats up very quickly so I only have it on half way for a few hours in the evening, the rest of the time it is virtually off. My flat mates room is slightly larger though and I am unsure what she does with hers. We never heat the living room and kitchen though as that is a large area which we never use so the heating in there is always off. In terms of the sub meteres we have a meeting with the landlord tomorrow where we are going to discuss this, I'm not sure how much cooperation we will receive though as he is very unlikely to admit to any wrong doing. We just can't understand how a two bed apartment can use the same amount of electricity in one month as a house does in a year even without having any gas. The provider is N Power and when checking comparison websites this does seem to be one of the most expensive but as I said when we moved in we were told we were unable to change as the provide the electricity for all of his apartments coming from one meter. If we refuse to pay is there anything he can do? He has paid the bill to N Power so we're assuming we can't be cut off as this would have to be done by them and they have no reason to as the bill has been paid? We're just not sure what steps to take next? Nothing in the contract is mentioned about heating apart from we must pay all due utility bills however no physical bill has been provided?

We've seen the letter from the electricity provider though stating that is how much he pays per unit. We don't have any access to the meter room or where the water is heated as the room is locked and we are not allowed a key so I'm unsure of how it all works. All I know is that when we first moved in we were told we did not have access to the room and we were unable to change provider as the one provider supplies everything for all of his properties. Nothing is mentioned in the contract about energy apart from saying that we must pay our utility bills. However the letter we received was just a document typed out on word, with no pay by date requesting us to transfer the money to the estate agents to forward on to the landlord.

Would this show up in the tests he was talking about doing? If not how could we find out if this was the case?

He also provided us with another reading of the meter from the beginning of January to the beginning of February an said the meter states an extra 1700 KwH has been used! Is this possible?

We recently received a letter from our landlord stating that we owed him over £500 for 3856 KwH of electricity usage between the end of September and the beginning of January. We live in a small two bedroom apartment and thought this seemed ridiculously high seeing as both me and my flat mate work full time jobs which see us out of the house most evenings and nights, our tumble dryer does not work so we always hang our clothes out to dry and the ceiling lights in my room do not work even if I try to change the bulbs so I light my room using one small lamp. We don't have gas in the property but we still feel this is high for the amount we could realistically be using? When questioned about this the landlord said he could not send us a copy of the bill as he owns many properties on the road which all come from one meter - he has just installed himself sub meters for each of these properties but only receives one bill from the energy provider. He also sent us a letter showing us how much he claims he gets charged per KwH. The letter states he pays 24.37p for every KwH yet he's only charged us 13p. I can't believe he's paying half of our bill for us? When we queried about this saying we would refuse to pay until he could give us some actual proof this is what we had used, he responded saying he is going to rent a test unit to confirm where the usage has come from and he will also test the unit wired to the sub meter but I feel like him testing his own equipment is only going to provide results swinging in his favour? We do not have an amazing relationship with the landlord and feel as though with him saying he pays half our electricity for us as well then testing his own equipment that he installed (the energy provider confirmed they had nothing to do with the submeter) that there might be something not quite right? We've tried citizens advice and shelter but neither of them was interested, is there anything else we can do?