Hi, Thanks for the responses. waterbottle: I am collecting for the other tenants as well as myself, to pass on to them as some of them are no longer in the country. When I moved in to the house, I paid the deposit directly to the person leaving (as seems to be the norm in share-houses), so my name won't be on any deposit receipt. This is partially why I asked question 4. tiglet: the lease was taken out before TDS became a requirement. esio trot: Yes that's correct, my feeling is that the landlord did this to try and avoid confrontation with us. The original tenancy agreement is currently out of the country with one of the original tenants but I've asked her to check this. On the TDS point, it is probably irrelevant but still might be worth mentioning. We did attempt to renew the lease in December 2007, we signed a new 12 month lease for the same rent price, then 2 months later received a letter stating that rent was being increased, and that we had to also backpay the rent increase back to beginning of December. We rang and told them they couldn't do that as we had agreed & signed a lease at a certain price, and there was no clause for rent increase. The real estate came back to us and said that while we had signed the lease, the landlord hadn't, so the lease was effectively not valid at that point and they felt they could increase the rent. Again we refused, and due to other (unrelated to the house) circumstances a couple of people had to move home, so we gave our 1 months notice and moved out. On the newer lease we had signed, there was no mention of TDS, and stated that the landlord would be holding the deposit. So I'm guessing as the landlord hadn't signed the lease, it probably wasn't "active", and therefore the lack of TDS wouldn't come into effect? Cheers

Hi, If no-one can answer my questions above, could someone point me in the direction of someone / an organisation that could give some advice? I'm relatively new to the country, so am unsure of where to go for advice on these type of matters. Cheers

Hi All, I have a couple of questions regarding a deposit that was not returned in full, any advice here would be helpful. Some background: We had a 12 month lease on a house from Nov 2006 - Nov 2007, and stayed on for a few more months until end of Feb 2008 while we were trying to negotiate a new lease. A couple of weeks after we moved out after bugging the landlord for our deposit, he returned some of it - roughly £800 out of £1200 - to the real estate agent. Apparently he felt the need to take out £400 for painting and cleaning costs, none of which we agree we are responsible for. £200 of this was to repaint the bathroom as there was a buildup of mould on the ceiling due to poor ventilation, as we could not physically open the bathroom window. He blames us for this. So after a couple of weeks of negotiating via email and phone, asking for proof of damages and costs, we are ready to take this to court. So here are my questions: 1) We have only had written correspondance via email so far, I plan on sending a final request for the full deposit shortly via post, but can email correspondance be used in court to show we have attempted negotiation? 2) When I went to pick up the deposit and found it was not all there, I decided to leave the partial deposit with the real estate to hold onto until we sorted out the full amount, as I did not want to be seen as accepting the terms of the landlords claim. Would it be wise to pick up this partial deposit from the real estate before putting a serious court threat to the landlord, in case he goes down and takes it all back? 3) There was an 'inventory', which just lists the items in the house as it was fully furnished, but there was no mention of the condition of anything, and nothing but the lease was signed by anyone. Reading stickies and other posts here, it seems without a signed condition report (before or after the lease), it sounds quite likely the court will act in our favour. We have no documentation ourselves, no photos, no records, I'm not sure we even have the original lease. How badly will this work against us? 4) I moved into the house a few months after the lease was signed, and wasn't required to sign it. I did pay rent directly to the landlord though. 2 of the original lease holders have recently moved back to their home countries, so where would I personally stand in my ability to take this guy to court, considering I haven't signed anything? I'm hoping this will not be a difficult situation, as we are quite fed up with the landlord at this stage. Any advice or answers would be greatly appreciated. Cheers