Yes I have written to ASDA pointing out that they have no statutory Authority to issue fines and that it is illegal for them to do this. So far they have ignored it.

So have I, repeatedly, for a ticket I got for parking in a disabled bay. Despite the fact that my disabled badge is permanently stuck to my dashboard. ASDA didn't want to know and said it was a matter to take up with TCP as they were the ones who issued the ticket.

So much for their supposed concern for the disabled in their car parks.

I assume you mean plead guilty by post!?

Are they also advising that you do not give mitigating circumstances?

 

For me, the real issue for you is not what the court may do but the impact that this will have on cost and getting insurance in the future. I think you need to engage in discussions with your insurers now on this. I also recommend that you spend some money on advice from a specialist solicitor.

I agree on this one Andrea. Better to get the correct legal advice than risk getting it wrong and paying for it more seriously.

NO!!! definitely do NOT pay their fee. It is not an official PCN or FPN, just an invoice for the driver to pay a sum for not buying a ticket. It basically amounts to a penalty charge and the most they could legally expect to be able to recover is their losses, in this case the cost of the ticket you didn't buy when you parked.

Keep the ticket, and wait to see if they write to you demanding money with menaces, as is their wont. Then we'll take it from there. In the meantime read the sticky's on Private Parking at the top of the forum to give you an idea of how to deal with them when the time comes. And whatever you do, never admit liability to these idiots.

Shouldn't imagine he would turn nasty. Like I said, most people go through financial problems at some point. If he does, then just let him know that it was a definite one-off occurance and you guarantee it won't happen again. He'll probably keep an eye on the payments closely for a while but will eventually see that it was just that.

And you didn't sound rude, so no apology needed.

Yes I am a landlord. And yes, in my opinion, if one of my tenants came to me with a hardship story after being a model tenant then the fact that it would be late wouldn't bother me at all. Letting property is not all about contracts. There has to be a modicum of trust between a good landlord and a good tenant for the relationship to work.

Carry on and pay the rent on the first day you have it if you haven't heard from hin beforehand. And then reinstate your S/O to continue payments on the normal date. The worst thing in this situation would be to plead hardship and then not pay when you could just becausehe hasn't contacted you about it.

Sounds like you have a good relationship with him, so don't worry. The best tenants are the ones who pay on time and you very rarely hear from.

How far has this got now, as I think there are some issues here that need clarifying.

Firstly, you stated above that:

3. We used his home address when he had only given us our rental address.

According to Section 48: Notification by the landlord of address for service of notices.

Basically the law calls for the name and address of the landlord to be issued to the tenant for the purposes of serving notice by the tenant. The tenant must have an address in England and Wales for the landlord where they can serve notices. For the purposes of Section 47 and 48 of The Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 name and address of the landlord should be included in the tenancy agreement and it should be stated that this is in line with the relevant act. This has to be separate from the rental address.

Secondly, you said that there was never any inventory made when you moved in. Every property should have an inventory. All inventories should be prepared by an inventory clerk. Inventory clerks are the independent persons who will go through your property with a tooth comb and note everything. You need an signature on the inventory to prove that it is valid. Without it, there is no proof as to what state the property was in prior to the tenancy, and therefore the landlord has no right to retain your deposit to cover what he may consider to be damage to the property, and he has no defence to your claim in court. A judge will not look favourably on a landlord that is trying it on.

Another tip should you decide to rent again is to ask the landlord/agency who they use to do the cleaning and employ the same people that way they can never say needs to be cleaned.

Excellent advice here for anybody renting property. And it will give you brownie points when it comes to getting your deposit back that you have enough consideration of the property to want it cleaned to the standards they set themselves.

If he is abroad a lot then getting hold of him may be a problem. Although, to be fair to you, he should have a number where someone in authority can be reached in emergency if he is out of the country and unreachable by his tenants. Can't imagine the problems he would be faced with if something serious went wrong in a property and he could not be contacted to put things right. Actually, I can imagine, I just don't want to.

Yes, by all means email him if you have that option. Also ring and leave messages on his home, business and mobile phones. Make sure they convey the fact that his response to your messages is of utmost urgence to you. He may well not see it as urgent that you want to tell him his rent may be late, but it does put you in good stead. As a belt and braces sort of bloke, I'd be inclined to post a letter to him too, or deliver by hand if he's near enough. But that is your choice and by leaving phone and email messages you have covered yourself anyway.

If you have a fairly good relationship with him you won't have a problem. Good luck and let us know how you get on or if you need any more help.

Personally, I see this as exactly that. A way for the agents to make some easy money prior to letting the property. I never actually use a credit check on a prospective tenant. I prefer to use the old fashioned method of employer and bank references. I was once subject to the exact scenario you described. Viewed rthe property, agreed to the terms and handed over £125. Got a call three days later to say that they had been recommended that I give a deposit of 6 months in advance since there was a gap of more than 2 weeks between 2 of my jobs. The fact that this 2 weeks was after I had just left the army and was in one of their "courses" for getting people used to civvy life was neither here nor there as far as they were concerned.

The sooner these type of fees are set and capped the better for all concerned, both landlord and tenant.

Firstly, don't panic. Before a landlord can seek possession of a property there has to be 2 months (8 weeks) rent arrears at the time of the notice. And even then there still has to be the same arrears at the time of the court hearing for it to go ahead.

Ring your landlord and explain that you have a cashflow crisis this month, explain your reasons if you wish, and let him know that you will be paying your rent, but that due to the problems you face then it may take up to 14 days to sort it out.

Most landlords will be understanding of any problems as few of us have ever had a completely hassle-free financial life. As long as he knows that he will get paid then he shouldn't be a problem. Just make sure it doesn't happen too often. The problems arise when someone doesn't talk to their landlord and the landlord starts to think they may have a problem tenant on their hands.

On the other side of this, make sure your bank aren't going to charge you for a returned standing order. If it looks like you will get charged for it, cancel this months S/O before it goes out.

The credit check may not exclude you from being offered the tenancy despite your CCJ. At the end of the day it is up to the discretion of the agent/landlord as to who it gives the tenancy to. If you are going to be upfront about the CCJ then ask the agent what the chances are of you being offered the tenancy with it on your credit file before you hand over any sum of money. But still be wary if he says it "probably" won't make a difference. What he will mean there is that it won't make a difference to him, since he knows that the CCJ will probably exclude you from consideration.

The fee you pay is for the credit check and subsequent drawing up of documents prior to your tenancy starting. I have yet to find where it says that they can ask for ALL the fees up front, but it appears that it is standard industry practice, and we know what that means from the CRA issues.

Yes, if you pay the money to lots of different agents and keep getting turned down, you will end up losing £1000's as it is non refundable and you will sign an agreement to this effect when you hand over the money.

Best bet? Try going back to your last agency, if you had no problems with your tenancy. They may waive the credit check if they know you to be a previously good tenant.

You are more than welcome. Hope things work out for you. If you need any more advice just PM me.

PS Not all us landlords are wealthy. I'm actually on benefits and disabled. I just act as landlord in an unpaid capacity for the properties on my late parent's estate as per the conditions of the will. They left everything in trust to our kids. lol

My deposit was paid in Feb 07 so before Tenancy Deposit Scheme.

 

Dont really know where this leaves me - perhaps the next step is to put something in writing?

 

I am sure she is taking liberties - am i right?

Start a new thread and detail the problem a little more. Will see if I can advise then.

Strike that, you already have. sorry. lol

Just had another thought, did you ever have a gas safety certificate for the heating? This is a requirement of hers that it is done correctly and is kept up to date. You should have ben given a copy on your entry into the tenancy and at 12 month intervals from the date that the system was installed or the building was first let.

A copy of the safety check record or certificate must be given to the new tenant before the tenant occupies the premises. Also a copy of the new record must be given to the existing tenant within 28 days of the check.

The maximum penalty imposed in a Magistrates Court for non-compliance is a fine of £5,000

This greatly changes things. If she stated that you could vacate on the 4th, then that is the date from which she has to pay you back your overpayment. Since you have fulfilled her requirements to have the property cleaned proffessionally at your own expense and have replaced the broken part of the fridge after the agreed handover date she has no right to withold any money due to be repaid. The 4th would be your handover date and the agreement to rectify and aquiesce to her wishes was made after this and therefore you should have been paid back from the 4th.

My apologies for the mistake in the previous post. However, on the information you had given at the time, that was my reasonable assumption of the events.

Try writing to her and explaining that since she had agreed to you vacating on the 4th, and she has incurred no expense whatsoever in the return of the property to her in a state that she required, then the repayment date for the overpayment of rent runs from the 4th and not the 8th. Ask her nicely to return the rest of the overpayment, and remind her that if she should refuse to do so you will have no choice but to seek legal advice regarding the matter. Include that you will also be seeking advice as to her negligence in the matter of the lock and the heating system that you requested be fixed but never was. If you have any letters you sent or received then they would help.

A very interesting article. Though it would be wise for any landlord to fully check the terms before agreeing to anything of that nature. I've seen a lot of companies produce policies of this nature over the years, and in most cases they have clauses written in to state things like: "Must be assessed at 6 monthly intervals to ensure.....are not faulty immediately prior to the claim for repair" and so on. And then you find out that the only people who can assess the property every six months in relation to the policy are those that are approved by the insurers and usually charge huge fees for doing it.

My advice to any prospective landlord is: If you are unsure about what you are doing with regards to letting a property then you are better off using a decent letting agent. Weigh up the pro's and con's for both options and bear in mind how much it "could" cost if you get it wrong.

The agent's fee is normally for the drawing up of contracts and for assessing the potential of a prospective lessee to pay the rent on time, usually done by a credit check. In many cases this can be as much as £150.00 per property. The fee is usually payable up front, so as to enable the agent to initiate the checks etc. You would normally be required to sign an agreement to have the checks etc done for the stated fee.

In this case, it seems that the fee they have now asked for is not one that was agreed to prior to you paying the deposit and entering into an agreement to take on the property. Whether they are legally allowed to ask for this fee depends on where it is written that they will be charging it. If it is a footnote to the contract, then it is deemed that the contract will only go ahead on payment of this fee. If it is not actually on the contract, and is just in a letter from them, you have the right to challenge them about it.

This is a grey area as far as your leaving the property before your term has ended. Unless there was a tacit agreement that your landlady would pay you back the amount overpaid, then you are obliged to pay up until your agreement ends. You contacted your landlady on the 5th letting her know that the property was ready for handover, but the earliest that she could have been reasonably expected to come and inspect would have been the afternoon of the 7th to give her a decent amount of notice to arrange to be there. 48 hours is classed as a decent amount of notice. Though this is not part of any legislation anywhere.

I have to ask, did you tell her previously that the part for the fridge would not arrive until the 8th? If you did, and as you consented to put right the damage before you handed over, then your obligation didn't end until the 8th when the part had been delivered and the property was up to the standard agreed between you and the landlady.

To me, this is little more than just nit-picking on her behalf, and for the sake of a fridge shelf, a small piece of plastic, the right to withhold the repayment for the period when it wasn't in place is not a point I, as a landlord, would risk taking to a court. However, unfortunately for you, she is right in that since you agreed to meet her on the 8th to have the property inspected and handed over that is when your rent period ended.

As an aside to this, was there an inventory done for the property and was it signed by both parties?

Oh, I definitely agree. I am in a wheelchair because some stupid taxi driver in a rush thought he knew better than the law and tried to overtake on a bend with double lines in the middle of the road.

 

Irrelevant of the fact that the zigzags in question are there legally or not, when it comes to road safety too many people think they know best. If the zigzags are there, whether legally or not, don't park there. It's no excuse to park first and then try and get out of the fine for doing so by trying to find a loophole. If someone isn't prepared to pay the fine for getting caught out, then don't break the law and put other people's lives at risk.

You miss the point yet again.

 

If the zig-zags are not there legally (ie with TRO), then no law is broken by parking there.

If you want to quote me use it in context.

Basically, you are saying that, irrelevant of the road markings it is justification for anyone breaking the law to check there is a TRO in force so they can get out of their punishment. Would you have felt this way if you had been the victim of another road user's incompetence but they got off because there was no TRO?

I agree that there is a duty by the councils to make sure they abide by the law and that TRO's are legally in place, but does that give people the right to deliberately ignore the visible road markings and then try to find a way to get out of their penalty?

Ok, now you are getting into a whole new realm of tenancy that is largely un-legislated for the purposes of an agreement.

A tenancy can be either written or verbal. To be able to make a verbal agreement stand up in court, the landlord would need to produce an independant witness to the agreement who can state any terms that the landlord and tenant agreed to in the original tenancy. This is a very hard road to travel for any landlord as it is usually one person's word against another's. It's always recommended for both tenant and landlord to get the agreement down in writing.

More detail would be useful in this case, to be able to advise more fully.

Is the letting with the property owner or via an agency?

Did they give you a stated amount of rent prior to you moving in?

Do you have any correspondence between yourself and the landlord?

Does this state any terms or amounts of rent?

Anything you can give will help in this case. If you e-mail any letters you have to me removing any personal details I will see what i can come up with.

Having said that, the rules on section 48 notices still apply, and they would be hard pushed to get rent via a court without it.

After letters back & forth they set a payment rate of £5 per week. After a couple of months I wrote to them again saying my financial situation had changed & I could only afford £1 per week.

They have taken me to court & have now set the payment rate at £30 per week,

Why have these people done this to me when I send them proof that I could only afford £1 per week?

It's not that unusual for a court to ignore any proof of your income without one of their own income/expenditure sheets being filled out. And even then they may not take account of it. It all depends on who is on the bench on the day. And they probably looked at the offer of £1 a week as an attempt to get around their payment schedule. Even for those on benefits the court will usually look at a repayment of at least £5 a week.

You could try writing to the court again and requesting a hearing to discuss your financial situation with regards to the fines and your inability to pay at the new rate, which may result in an arrest warrant being issued. Tell them that you aren't trying to get out of paying, just that you can't afford this new larger amount.

Most fines officers are usually pretty understanding when you talk to them, and will be able to negotiate a lower payment for you if you ring and talk to them (and not being sexist, but this is more likely if you talk to a woman). However, it may not be reduced to the £1 you say you can afford, but you may be able to get it back down to the £5 you were originally paying.

As stated earlier, you can request that the fines be transferred to your local area and then try to make a change to the amount once it is moved.

Good luck.

What's this? Insomniacs anonymous? lol

If you pay the rent before the court date and keep it up to date then they have no grounds to seek possession for arrears. So it shouldn't go to court. They must keep an accurate record of all documentation, letters etc that have been sent, and when. This is in case they have to revert to possession under Grounds 10 and 11 (discretionary Grounds):

10. Some rent was due when the notice was served and at the date of the proceedings. 11. The tenant has been persistently late in paying the rent.

If the above don't apply then they cannot take it to court, and you won't be liable for any court costs. They must always ensure that the correct notice form is used otherwise the proceedings will be invalid. Keep the illegal eviction idea on the back burner for now. You can always come back to it at a later date. Incidentally, if you know the officers who attended or have their numbers it will help if you need to go this route. They will have had to write a detail of the call in their notebooks. Could be handy.

Be careful about how you word the letter about their invalid inventory. Just say you will have it removed from the property. You don't need to state where to, and I wouldn't bother sending them a bill, in light of the withheld rent. It may just cause more problems. Just get a house clearance company in to pick it all up free.

Just as a quick aside, if the property is furnished then they have a duty under The Furniture and Furnishings (Fire)(Safety) Regulations 1988 to ensure that the furniture complies with safety regulations. The regulations set levels of fire resistance for domestic upholstered furniture, furnishings and other upholstered products and act as secondary legislation under the Consumer Protection Act 1987.

All furnishings must under go 2 tests: match test and cigarette test. All furnishings must carry labelling as shown below, proving that they have undergone and passed the test.

The regulations apply to:

Beds, headboards, mattresses, sofa-beds, futons and other convertibles, nursery furniture, garden furniture, scatter cushions, seat pads, pillows, loose and stretch furniture coverings and other replacement furniture to be used in a rental property.

The regulations do not apply to:

Antique furniture and furniture made prior to 1950, bed clothes and duvets, pillow cases, curtains, carpets and sleeping bags.

Failure to comply can lead to a 6 month prison sentence or a fine of £5000

Just a little something to give you some bargaining power in the event that they try to say you have no right to remove the junk they left there.

Any problems with anything I've said then PM me and I'll write you up a quick letter for you to send them.

When you buy from a car auction, it is not considered to be a consumer sale, so your consumer rights can be, and usually are, greatly reduced. You will be bound by the auction’s written terms and conditions, which must be available to you before you buy. They may be posted on the wall, issued in a booklet or on other paperwork.

As stated above, sold as seen has no standing against your consumer rights. That said, a dealer selling a vehicle has a legal obligation to ensure that the car is roadworthy prior to sale. If there is anything on the car that makes it unroadworthy then the seller has a duty to correct it or refund the full cost of the vehicle.

Read the link to Trading Standards carefully , it gives a lot of good information, such as:

Internet auctions

Most Internet auctions only provide the site for the auctions to be held and, therefore, are not generally liable for the goods bought and sold. It is preferable to check the terms and conditions of the website for full details.

You have the same basic rights against a trader as you do with any other purchase, although auction sales are exempt from the Distance Selling Regulations. You should also take note that your statutory rights cannot be excluded when buying from a trader through an Internet auction

Section 48: Notification by the landlord of address for service of notices.

Basically the law calls for the name and address of the landlord to be issued to the tenant for the purposes of serving notice by the tenant. The tenant must have an address in England and Wales for the landlord where they can serve notices.

For the purposes of Section 48 of The Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 name and address of the landlord should be included in the tenancy agreement and it should be stated that this is in line with the relevant act etc.

As the courts see it, rent can not be demanded from a tenant unless they have an address and name to which they can pay the rent. Therefore, as a landlord you can not demand rent from the tenant if you have failed to issue them with notice of your address.

At the end of the day a landlord can not serve notice of possession on a tenant whom they have not given notice of their address to. i.e. the tenant says to the judge I did not know where to send the rent to! Without notice, the rent is not lawfully payable.