In the letter I sent to my landlady and when speaking to her on the phone a few times I have asked for a meeting at the flat so that she can show me the points that she has risen. She cancelled one meeting and has now said that she is unwilling to meet me to show the flat. Am I entitled to be at the final inspection or at least be able to see the accusations she is making for myself? Her reasons being is that she has already had it cleaned.

Yeah I signed an inventory, thanks for the help. Does it change anything as out tenancy agreement was out of date?

I have been reading through the majority of the posts on this forum and have found a lot of good advice and information, if I can tell my story and ask some questions, as I haven't found all the answers yet. Moved into a one bed flat in April '05 with my girlfriend, and gave £650 deposit. The tenancy agreement ran out in April '06 but we were never asked to sign a new one and so it never crossed our mind, as we hadn't thought about it. This hasn't been raised as of yet. Moved out of the address Feb '07, the landlady has gone around for her inspection and raised numerous points. When we left the flat we cleaned it to in our opinion to a high standard, I thought it was spotless, with hindsight I should have taken some pictures of when we moved in and moved out. My landlady has gone around and said that it is not up to the standard with which we accepted it when we moved in, which I totally disagree with. Her words were it has to be returned in the same condition as per our tenancy agreement. She is stating that the wooden flooring has risen under the fridge from water, however it has always been like that. Also that the flat needs to be professionally cleaned. She is claiming that there a few places where there was still dirt, namely the built in wardrobes, the window sills, and under the toilet, which I all personally cleaned myself, they are the only places she has so far mentioned. She is also stating that she needs to get in a professional gardener to sort the garden, however its been winter so there isn't a great deal of foliage there. We have agreed that we forgot to get the carpet professionally cleaned, and so we are willing to drop £40 for that to be done. When she asked about the fridge freezer I confirmed that we had defrosted it, and when we left it there was no ice left and it was bone dry, she claims that when she inspected the freezer trays were full of water which poured out and has damaged the wooden flooring next to the fridge, she then stated that we should have got a professional in to defrost the fridge....everything has to be professionally done according to her by the way. On the phone I asked if we could meet at the flat so that I could see for myself the points she is raising and so that we could discuss it. She seemed very unwilling to do this and said she would call me back in a few days to arrange a meeting. With the way she was I immediately penned a letter to her asking about this meeting and sent it to her home address, so that I could have something in writing for evidence. I have still not heard back, she did say that she would get back to me by the end of this week and so hopefully expect to hear from her by tomorrow (Friday). The questions I have are: Is it true she cannot use the deposit to pay for any work without my say so? Does she have to provide at least 2 or 3 written quotations for the work before hiring them? Does she have to return the deposit within 30 days or write to us explaining why she has not done so? To any of the questions above are they covered under an act of law, if so do you know where I can find it written down, or are they just good practice? We paid the rent via a standing order, it was never late and always the correct amount, we never caused her any problems what so ever. Sorry to go on but any answers and help is greatly appreciated, this is the first place I have rented and have no knowledge of this at all.