Hello all, I was recently recommended to look at this page first time poster, just quickly want to say how great it is. I am having a problem with my landlord trying to deduct almost my entire deposit for work he supposedly carried out to the property following us leaving. I have lived at many rented houses before and I have never ever had a problem with getting my entire deposit back previously, so clearly something isn't right. What’s worse is the house in dispute I actually went above and beyond the call of duty to make it nice before I left. The reason I did this was because we got on with the landlord and even recommended him to our friends to do work for them (he is a kitchen fitter by trade) so because we have a decent relationship with him I went the extra mile to get it way nicer than any house I have ever left previously. I filled in all the holes where the pictures had been and even painted them with the same paint so you couldn't even tell they was there. I bleached the whole kitchen and even got a special hoover to suck out all the dents were heavy stuff like the bed and wardrobes had made the carpet flat. Unfortunately our relationship soured soon after hearing that he is trying to take us for almost all of our deposit. Supposedly his claims when asking him to send evidence were 1 - Full days kitchen cleaning - He sent me a picture of 1 cupboard with a slight few marks from where the bottom of the tins had sat, we did clean the whole kitchen with bleach but we didn't get it professionally steam cleaned or anything so potentially there may have been a few stubborn marks that didn't come off initially, but having checked the tenancy agreement there is nothing in here saying that it needs professionally cleaning. He said there was mould in the kitchen? Having looked at the picture it doesn't look like there is. We have a baby so the kitchen is kept clean. We turned the kitchen off at the plug after leaving so not sure if maybe something formed in the time it was left off, but if there was something then it evidently is very small, and was missed on the initial clean we did, even on the close up of the picture it's not obvious that the fridge is unclean. I asked him to send any evidence he has to me in full, but he only send 1x close up of some small marks in the cupboard and 1x picure of the fridge, which doesn't even look particularly dirty. 2 - Toilet seat broken - I admitted that if he wants to he can deduct us for this, however arguably this is wear and tear and wasn't fitted properly neither was it photographed. The toilet seat to say the whole house had recently been refurbished wasn't on properly when we moved, it was one of those special soft closers and it looked to me as if the landlord or whoever fitted it hadn't got the fixins secured properly so it was actually stuck to the toilet instead using silicone - Regretfully though we never got round to telling the letting agent about this as it just wasn't that broken to be unusable so wasn't a big deal to us at the time. 3 - He said the bathroom cabinet was split at the bottom, however having looked at it it seems very minor and was certainly not something we ever noticed 4 - He says the blinds needed cleaning? we cleaned the entire house including the blinds, granted they were not professionally cleaned but this wasn't in our contract also he hasn't sent us any photo evidence of this 5 - He said the bracket that holds the integrated fridge in place was broken and the corner moulding needed putting back on - When we put the washing machine on due to very poor foresight john had sat the plug for the washing machine that the fridge was plugged into directly on top of the fridge, I had to manoeuvre the fridge slightly out in order to get the plug for washing machine in. The corner moulding then fell off because it was only glued on with no more nails, it wasn't fixed on with brackets. When I put the washing machine back in I re glued the corner moulding back on. I did not break any brackets. I suppose it's possible they could have broken over time but they are under the worktops so out of view so I didn't notice until we moved when I took the washing machine back out. I think he is being very harsh charging me for this especially considering it was very difficult getting the washing machine in and out in the first place. worst case scenario a couple of plastic brackets aren't going to cost more than a couple of quid if he wants to get so pedantic over it. 6 - The paint being a different colour - we asked the landlord when we moved in if he could put pictures up to which his response was "make the place your own". as mentioned before I went to more effort in this house to make it nice due to our relationship (ex relationship) with the landlord. Obviously when a picture is hung on a wall for 2 years the sun stains & trace dirt discolours the area around it, however unlike any other house with this one I went above and beyond by filling all the holes and smoothing them then repainting the area with the same colour paint which had been left for us in the cellar so it was definitely an exact match. Landlord is claiming he had to spend 2x days redecorating the bedroom the living room and the kitchen because despite them being the same colour due to the age difference the difference can be seen in certain lights. He didn't even send any photo evidence of this despite it being by far the biggest thing they are trying to deduct from us. Alternatively if i had left the marks & nails where the pictures had been wouldn't it had needed re decorating anyway? Feels a bit like a no win situation unless i was expected not to put pictures up and perform a full redecoration upon exiting which again wasn't in the tenancy agreement. Contradictory to this in fact the agreement says that reasonable allowances should be made for wear and tear by the landlord, something I feel he hasn't done. He is not an experienced landlord, he only has 2 houses and we are his first in this house as it was a restoration project when we moved so potentially he hasn't had anyone move out of one of his houses yet so part of me thinks he is not properly in touch with reality on what he should and should not claim for. I feel like he is trying to take us for a ride here and he is putting claims in for the most ridiculous things. Being an experienced tenant, I have never ever had my deposit docked for anything, and ironically despite my current landlord trying to charge £550 for 3 days labour and materials I have never ever left a house in such good condition as this last one. I want to know what options are available to me and even the potential for compensation. I am not the sort of person to normally seek this but the amount of inconvenience and stress he has put me through has been beyond reason.

I am in the process of a complaint regarding my late Father's estate. His medical insurer have withheld information relating to who provided his healthcare since 2009. Medical records are available to me under the Access to Health Record Act and I have requested this from a number of institutions which formed part of a litigation process surrounding invalid/ potentially fraudulent Wills. The health insurer stated that it would be a breach of the DPA to provide this information and invited me to gain appropriate legal status. At great expense, I did. They still refused to provide me with the private healthcare provider list and invited me to contact every healthcare professional in the country to see if they treated my late Father. Absurd! Having consulted the ICO, the DPA is not applicable here as the providers are acting in their professional capacity, so they are hiding behind inappropriate legislation. The adjudicator had never even heard of a 'grant of probate', which is shocking. So how did they make a decision upon my rights as executor? Yep, you got it, they couldn't be bothered to find out and made up their own version of the Administration of Estates Act! HMCTS have confirmed that a grant of probate is sufficient and the insurer's request to get a court order is unnecessary and possibly will be seen as a waste of court time. I referred the case to the FOS. It took over 4 months to be allocated to an adjudicator. The adjudicator was extremely inexperienced. I was invited to provide a breakdown of the legal costs for which WPA forced me to incur by leading me down a garden path. I stated this would take a week or so to compile from the legal bill narrative. Two days later, I received a letter (the adjudicator took less than a week in total to conclude their findings on a complex matter) stated that the firm believed the DPA to be in effect. Despite my extensive documentation and the adjudicator's own admission that it was a 'lengthy' complaint, it seems the adjudicator couldn't be bothered to deal with it properly and simply wanted to get it off the desk as quickly as possible. Upon speaking to the manager I was refused to be notified how long the adjudicator took to review the full file (hundreds of pages of documents) and had to source this from the helpline. Tellingly, the manager told me that the time that the adjudicator spends looking at the file before concluding is 'irrelevant' and the adjudicator had ignored most of my complaints as only the 'key issues' as defined by the adjudicator, not me. I was also told by the manager that this particular adjudicator's workload is extremely large and the individual was not feeling well and had to be stationed in one of their 'quiet rooms' for the day. Hmm... The whole process is bizarre. They quite clearly have no idea what they are doing and when I explained this to the helpdesk staff, they clearly admitted that they don't really help consumers. I don't see the point in their existence and have absolutely no confidence in the FOS now as it seems like a big game for firms to play with. It's a no brainer to send all complaints to the FOS if I were a firm as it's a safe risk due to the incompetence of the FOS. No wonder they are busy and it's in excess of 6 months for a case that has been referred to a full Ombudsman to be re-reviewed. Any similar experiences with the FOS?