Yes thank you. I have drafted the LBA and have all copies of letters etc to send with it. One question, if the LL responds to the LBA with an offer do I have to send another LBA taking that amount off. Sorry that sounds a bit confusing. So we know we owe for the outstanding rent which I have taken off the claim but if LL makes a payment/offer to pay does the time limit on the LBA 'reset' ie. I have to give a further 14 days?

No inventory. LL has photos of each room, but so do we and they are the same. Apart from the kitchen and bathroom carpet (who puts carpet in a kitchen and bathroom! We had asked for lino when she said she would change them before we moved in) which were new, the other carpets were in very poor condition, extremely old and had many burn marks from previous tenants (smoking burn marks). LL did not replace these although we suspect she had kept previous tenants deposit as when they vacated they left all the windows and doors open and all the taps running!

No admin fee in contract and no such conversation ever even took place. Receipt for deposit says deposit 'held'. Contract states deposit return will be agreed by deposit scheme (and also quotes the 2004 Housing Act all over it). When we asked for information re deposit scheme initially she wrote that the deposit would be dealt with separately by her and that is exactly what she has done. One example is that we had the carpets professionally cleaned (although they were not professionally cleaned when we took the tenancy). She had them done again and charged us for it.

Thanks again for your quick response. Sorry to keep having questions but do I claim for 1x deposit or 3x?

Thank you for your response. I was aware that the LL might be liable for the deposit from other threads on here. I do have a couple of specific queries: 1. Can the LL use in their defence that they asked us for a £25.00 admin fee for a deposit scheme but we refused? As I have said this is wholly untrue but I expect the LL to defend any claim and they could say anything! 2. If we claim through the courts I assume we only ask for the money the LL owes us not the full deposit (we have agreed all along to pay the outstanding rent). On a few threads there seems to be some conflicting advice. I want to make sure that I can fill the court forms in properly as I have not done anything like this before.

Hi all, We ended our tenancy early (with landlords agreement we have a signed deed of surrender). We owe the landlord a few days rent which we agreed to pay. When we asked initially for details of the deposit scheme the LL had used we received no response. We have written three times to ask for the information to no avail. The LL has now sent us some cash but has deducted over £260 for various 'issues' all of which we would strongly contest. Points: 1. AST from 2012 2. contract states deposit scheme will be used although not which one 3. no inventory completed 4. we have vacated the property (in very good condition and we did take some photos as evidence). LL is now saying our money was not put in a deposit scheme because we refused to pay the £25 admin fee. LL has made this up and is now saying this after a month of us trying to get our deposit back. We have previously rented and all our other landlords used a deposit scheme and we got all of our deposit returned with no problems. We had assumed that our money was safe and maybe the LL had overlooked sending us the paperwork. LL also has numerous other properties that they rent. Is our only option to take the LL to court? If so any advice would be gratefully received.