Landlord has changed forwarding details without permission***Resolved***

[Sipea71]

Hi

 

Not sure if I'm posting in the correct forum apologies if not.

 

Can a landlord of a property someone has moved out of contact utility companies and change the address on the accounts in the name of the old tenant even though the address they have given is wrong and nothing to do with the tenant?

 

The address they have given was an old address that the estate agent had as a forwarding address some time ago, but the property has been sold and no longer relevant to the tenant.

 

Also as the utilities have a new address, anything they send out will not be picked up by the post office redirection service so my friend (who this relates to) will not get her post?!

 

And info anyone can provide would be greatly apprecited

 

Thanks in advance

 

Simon

[honeybee13]

Hello there.

 

I'm not sure what you're asking, can you tell us what's happened please? Then we can decide which forum can help you.

 

HB

[AndyOrch]

Thread moved to the appropriate forum

 

Regards

 

Andy

[Sipea71]

Hi sorry, let me start at the beginning but I will try a different keep it short.

 

Basically a friend of mine has been given notice to leave her rented accommodation she had to move out on 25th of July. She moved in temporarily with her mum and has now found another property that she will move into on the 15th.

 

Over the last few months she had had some issues with the landlady and had built up some arrears, these were all sorted out but soon as she was clear the landlord gave notice to quit.

 

Now due to my friend having been in financial difficulty she currently has payment plans set up with the utility companies. When she called them to let them know that she was moving to a new address when checking to confirm current details the utilities had an address that used to belong to my friends mum that was sold and is no longer anything to do with her. On asking how they got that address the electric, gas and water company all said they had received a call from the old landlord changing the address.

 

So basically I was wondering

1. Is the landlord allowed to do that?

2. If not how can this happen surely there is some sort of data protection issue?

3. Important correspondence from utility companies that obviously can be used for ID fraud, has now been sent to a complete stranger at an address that is irrelevant to my friend on the say so of a landlord

 

Just wondered who was at fault if anyone

 

Thanks

 

Simon

[mariner51]

Nope, still does bot compute.

LL should not be able to change address for property for which he is not on record as LL / is not the account holder or it is a c*ck. by Utility Co.

One interpretation is that 'friend' fraudulently supplied new address, posing as LL, to thwart creditors.

People in debt can be quite inventive when wishing to avoid detection IMO. What benefit would LL gain by changing address with Utilities?

[king12345]

It happened to me a few years ago.

Tenant left my property owing a couple of hundred pounds in utilities.

He gave me his forwarding address which proved to be wrong.

I gave the utility company this address because I didn't want any dca or bailiffs at the door.

I then received calls from utility company saying that the address was incorrect and tenant wasn't living there.

I tried to contact the tenant several times without success.

It was a pain to get rid of dca.

I don't think there's a breach of dpa if the tenant deliberately leaves a debt behind.

Even if there was a breach, what would your friend do?

Sue the landlord?

Then he'll have to disclose his current address which will be surely passed to the creditor.

And I doubt any judge would be sympathetic with someone leaving a debt and disappearing.

I don't think the landlord changed the address maliciously, that's the address he was given and that's what he's given to utility company.

It was up to your friend, knowing that she had debts to inform the landlord.

He's better off come clean and pay/deal with the debt rather than pass the bucket to the landlord.

[Steve__M]

I had some tenants move out who had left a lot of debt on the meters. The utility company put me under a lot of pressure to provide them with a forwarding address - and they'd had a court order to fit prepay meters with debt on them so they had me by the wotsits.

 

I didn't know it so I couldn't help, but I didn't feel obliged to protect my tenants from being pursued for a valid debt when it was causing me a lot of hassle.

 

It could be that the tenant had provided the address at some earlier time - perhaps when originally moved in.

 

If there are data protection issues with me doing so then I doubt you will find anyone interested in pursuing them as per king12345's post above.

[camptownraces]

Hi sorry, let me start at the beginning but I will try a different keep it short.

 

Basically a friend of mine has been given notice to leave her rented accommodation she had to move out on 25th of July. She moved in temporarily with her mum and has now found another property that she will move into on the 15th.

 

Over the last few months she had had some issues with the landlady and had built up some arrears, these were all sorted out but soon as she was clear the landlord gave notice to quit.

 

Now due to my friend having been in financial difficulty she currently has payment plans set up with the utility companies. When she called them to let them know that she was moving to a new address when checking to confirm current details the utilities had an address that used to belong to my friends mum that was sold and is no longer anything to do with her. On asking how they got that address the electric, gas and water company all said they had received a call from the old landlord changing the address.

 

So basically I was wondering

1. Is the landlord allowed to do that?

2. If not how can this happen surely there is some sort of data protection issue?

3. Important correspondence from utility companies that obviously can be used for ID fraud, has now been sent to a complete stranger at an address that is irrelevant to my friend on the say so of a landlord

 

Just wondered who was at fault if anyone

 

Thanks

 

Simon

 

1. Of course the landlord is "allowed" to contact the utility companies when a tenant moves out, because all the accounts will have to be transferred to the landlord's name. He will also have given closing meter readings to the utility firms. No doubt the companies will have said "could you give us an address to send on the final bill, please?" and landlord will have replied, "I only have the address the tenant gave me before the tenancy began" which was tenant's mum's address. Clearly landlord contacted utility companies before the outgoing tenant did so. If outgoing tenant had been more organised and had got in first with the utilities, the question would never have been asked of the landlord, because outgoing tenant would have supplied current address.

2. No data protection issue here. Utility companies have a right to disclosure of the "new" address: your friend had a contract with them.

3. The "important correspondence" will have been addressed to your friend and may have been sent to the wrong address: but the person living there will probably have put it back in the post with "return to sender" on it. You said your friend had contacted the companies herself to give the correct address. Why was she so slow to do the right thing and phone them herself? What is so sensitive about an electricity bill? we all get them.

 

Your friend should get back to all the utilities, insist they record her address correctly, and send her copies of any correspondence which may have been sent elsewhere in error. This is the correct behaviour, she must sort out the debt.

[Sipea71]

Thanks for all your inputs, all sorted now.

[AndyOrch]

Thread title amended to reflect the outcome.

 

Regards

 

Andy

[mariner51]

Can OP tell us how this situation was resolved - for the education of others ?