A landlord has failed in a bizarre attempt to withhold her tenant’s deposit by billing hundreds of pounds for writing letters and taking photographs.
A First Tier Property Tribunal ordered Ginny Monroe to return £730 of the £750 deposit after it heard that she had charged for several prohibited payments under the Tenant Fees Act.
Tenant Phyu Hnin Khine rented a room at the landlord’s house in Frimley Road, Camberley, in November 2022 and paid a holding deposit of £250 – part of the £750 returnable tenancy deposit – and signed a house share agreement in January 2023. She moved out in August 2023 and requested her deposit back, but Monroe did not reply.
The landlord handed in a nine-page letter to the tribunal explaining why she had kept the deposit including the cost of taking photographs documenting the condition of the tenant’s room while she lived in the house, billed at £15 an hour.
Monroe argued she should not have needed to have spent time on this, based on the ‘written tenancy agreement’…of which, states ‘…that your bedroom should be kept clean and tidy…’. Monroe added that the letter had taken about 10 hours thinking time and about 12 hours writing time, adding up to £330.
Other itemised costs were ‘talking noise or shouting vocal noise’ which she had to address on occasions, along with taking in deliveries in connection to her tenant’s business for which she also charged £15 an hour.
Munroe added that she incurred extra costs of electricity, gas, water and her own time in expanding the broadband capability for her tenant’s business and charged £200, as well as the cost of having to communicate with her about the move-out date, ‘in writing, in editing and in thinking about these unnecessary messages’.
Her tenant explained that she was not running a business from the property.
The tribunal judge ruled that the holding deposit ought to have been no more than £150, equivalent to one week’s rent, and that the charges made by Monroe were not part of the permitted payments.
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