Myself and a friend entered into an AST in 2008 with a private landlord where I was the lead tenant. Our deposit was placed with the DPS.

Although we had a good relationship with the landlord throughout the tenancy, when we gave notice to quit in 2011 he seemed to take the matter personally and started being very standoffish with us.

On our moving out date, the landlord did not attend the property. When we called his phone to find out where he was, it rang with a foreign dial tone and the call was rejected, so he wasn't even in the country and decided to ignore us. We ended up posting the keys back through his letter box and were never properly checked out.

Since the landlord had essentially absconded we did a stat dec and sent it off to the DPS to get our deposit back and assumed it would follow. A couple of days before we would have had it, the landlord opposed the stat dec and would not consent to ADR. This left it in limbo and our only remedy was to take court action.

We mulled it over at the time and in the end made the stupid decision not to pursue him and put it down to experience. Eventually we got over the matter and I'd not given it any thought for several years.

Until today when I moved into a new property which also used DPS and when I checked my account I found two tenancies were shown, and was amazed to find our old deposit from 2008 is still there, now with the status 'suspended pending review'.

What is the legal position on this deposit now? Neither us nor the landlord can take civil action against each other as more than 6 years has gone by, but the money is still held with the DPS, and it is our money.

Any chance of getting this back after all these years? And if not, what will eventually happen to it?

The only way you will answer to your own question is to contact the DPS Scheme that Deposit is held in and simply ask.

Do you still have any documents from that time on this?

We still have the tenancy agreement, a copy of the notice to quit letter we sent to the landlord and (probably) a copy of the stat dec (although that was sent to the DPS and accepted at the time, it was only the landlord's intervention that prevented the deposit being returned).

Email being fired off to DPS now.