Tips on Tenancy Deposit Disputes 6: Evidence

Tip 6: Evidence. Keep Receipts for Everything

With thousands of deposit disputes being decided by the deposit protection schemes every year, if you haven’t been party to a dispute yet, it is only a matter of time. The essence of my advice in this week’s column is to make like a boy scout and be prepared.

You should be keeping accurate records of expenditure for tax and accounting purposes, but I am consistently surprised at the lack of documentation kept by some landlords. You cannot predict what will be the subject of a deposit dispute and you could find yourself needing to prove anything from the age, quality or condition of an item of furniture, to the service history of an appliance. If you don’t keep records and receipts of work done on your property, you may struggle to make a successful claim.

In my experience, most tenant’s submissions at adjudication boil down to one of four basic defences, which I will discuss in more detail over the coming weeks. Where your claim over the deposit relates to damage to the property, the relevant tenant defence is “it was like that when I moved in.” You need to constantly be thinking about how you will defeat this defence when taking any action relating to the property.

For example, imagine you let the property with stained carpets, but you agree to replace them after the beginning of the tenancy. The tenant then stains your brand new carpets. At the end of the tenancy you make a claim on the deposit for the cost of cleaning the carpet. The tenant disputes your claim and takes you through the ADR process, stating “it was like that when I moved in”. The inventory from move in will support the tenant. If you don’t have receipts or other evidence to support your claim, you will lose.

Tom Derrett is the Principal of Deposit Claim, an ex-adjudicator and an expert on the Deposit Protection Schemes.

Free property management software, Free tenancy agreements