Hi Elisee. A couple of days after I posted this, I received another letter from mydeposits.co.uk saying they would now be taking on my case. I believe the landlord either quickly reproected my deposit, or had reprotected it previously but not told me the details of it. This meant that the dispute could go through their service. Ultimately I ended up losing £60 out of my deposit, as the adjudicator took my side, largely because the landlord had declined a checkout inspection. I don't think this will help you much, I was lucky! I hope you get it all sorted out.

Thank you for your help, Mariner. I'll rule out option 2, then. I really don't feel comfortable meeting with the landlord, as he is quite intimidating and I'll get muddled (I'm not good in situations like these). Would courts find it acceptable if I sent a letter to the landlord stating that the deposit was not protected, and that I do not agree with his assessment of the cost of the dispute? I estimate the time it would take for a cleaner to scrub the material off the wall to be around an hour, so I was thinking that I could offer two hours at £9.95 per hour (a typical rate for a cleaner in this area) to be generous. Does that sound reasonable?

Hello, I'm needing a bit of help. I've contacted my local citizen's advice bureau but they just emailed me some generic papers ... I moved out of a private flat rental a couple of months ago. I left it cleaner than when I moved in, and with a number of issues I'd reported to the landlord which he never fixed. The only issue was where my deep fat fryer had been, oil had evaporated onto a 3' x 1' of wall. It scrubs away but unfortunately I'm in constantly poor health and ran out of time/ability to do it before I moved out. The landlord declined a final inspection with after ignoring my phone calls in the days before, and instead hanging around at the flat below (which he also owns) on the final day of my agreement "hoping he'd bump into me". I was at work, and had left messages saying I would be available in the evenings. As he'd been "hanging around" all day he didn't want to go back (he lives a matter of 2 minutes away by car, 5-10 walking) to do the inspection with me. My landlord has not returned my deposit, or contacted me at all until I sent him a letter before action to recover my deposit. I'd previously tried to contact mydeposits.co.uk to raise a dispute to recover it, but they informed me that because my contract was renews and my landlord didn't reprotect it, my deposit was no longer protected with them. I mentioned this in my letter before action. In response to this, my landlord replied that my deposit was protected (a lie), that he'd been waiting for me to contact him (despite him saying he'd contact me), and that he wants to deduct £120 for because of the "candle wax" that "I'm aware will not come off" (wax would scrape off!) so the wallpaper has to be stripped and redecorated. I'm happy to pay for someone to scrub the oil off the wall, however the wall in question is NOT papered, its paint directly on plaster. I'd be happy to pay for some paint as well but the kitchen needed repainting anyway as it was in poor condition from the previous tenant. I'm not sure what would be a fair deduction in this case. I'm not sure where to proceed from here. As far as I can tell I have three options: 1) sort it out with him directly, 2) make him protect my deposit in retrospect (is that possible?) so I can use a proper dispute service, or 3) send him court papers. I don't think I can handle option 1, as the landlord is intimidating and difficult to speak to as he evades answering questions a lot. I don't know if option 2 is even possible, so I'm hoping someone can help. Thanks in advance.*