Useful little discussion HERE about a tenant who wasn’t awarded the 3* deposit penalty as the Landlord had protected the deposit by the time of the Court Hearing. This runs contrary to Stankova v Glastonbury
One hopes that the OP in the thread does appeal.
With only conflicting decisions at County Court to go on it’s all as clear as mud.
But the problem is that all these cases are small claims with a District Judge, so an appeal would only be to the Circuit Judge. You’d need the second appeal to the Court of Appeal to produce anything binding.
The feedback I have recieved from a couple of unreported cases is that Judges will not make the award if the deposit is protected before the case comes to court. However I am not sure that this is what parliament intended.
There is a report from the DPS saying that some 62% of deposits go unprotected. I have commented on it on my blog http://landlordlaw.blogspot.com.
Thanks J and Tessa,
Let’s hope for a double appeal! Seems a little unlikely from the linked thread though.
I wonder if there is scope for some friendly litigation? Could Shelter and / or one of the landlord groups (ARLA? NLA?) find two parties willing to run a case, with a prior agreement that neither party would seek their costs, whatever the outcome?
That sounds like a good idea.
Would be great to get it settled one way or the other.
[...] law in recent years. It has previously been discussed by NL here and here, by Housed here and here and by Landlord Law here, all of which are worth a read and, helpfully, save me from having to say [...]