London: how to deal with a landlord not protecting a deposit and not rembursing it?

Question

I have been living in London for several years now and experienced issues with one of my last letting agencies. I'm looking for your legal advice on what actions to take.

It was an Assured Shorthold Tenancy Agreement within a shared house. The issue with this tenancy which ended almost a year ago was that the landlord never paid me back my deposit and also never protected it under the deposit scheme.

This website states that "before I start a court claim, I must send my former landlord a formal 'letter before action'. This letter must set out the detail of my claim."

I found out that the court could force my landlord to pay up to 3 times the deposit amount. Is it 3 times on top of the reimbursement of the deposit (i.e. a total of 4 times the deposit in best case scenario), or including the reimbursement of the deposit?

So I prepared the template letter as described here.

My question to you is: can I decide to take this to court if, let's say, the landlord does not agree to settle for at least 2 times the deposit amount?

Answer 1

Under section 214 of the Housing Act 2004 (as amended), the penalty for not protecting the deposit is considered separately from the deposit itself.

In the case where the tenant has already moved out (emphasis mine):

(3A) The court may order the person who appears to the court to be holding the deposit to repay all or part of it to the applicant within the period of 14 days beginning with the date of the making of the order.

(4)The court must order the landlord to pay to the applicant a sum of money not less than the amount of the deposit and not more than three times the amount of the deposit within the period of 14 days beginning with the date of the making of the order.

(See also here and here).

In other words, if this goes to court, the landlord may be faced with paying back (in the worst case for him) the entire deposit, plus a penalty of up to three times the deposit.

Therefore, unless the landlord is feeling confident, privately agreeing for him to pay two times the deposit could be a good deal, as it's half what a court could award.