'Cos I have major cold feet.
I lived in a rented house for three years with an incompetent absentee landlady who used an equally incompetent letting agent. I moved out in March after some serious problems with disrepair.
I had a fair few threads about it at the time - we had no heating, dangerous rotting windows/frames, a shower that they'd employed some cowboy to fit that wasn't earthed , dodgy wiring throughout, leaky roof that fell in when we were fortunately away for a weekend and much more. Environmental Health got involved and started enforcement action against the landlady, and the disrepair was so bad we were told we were in effect homeless as it wasn't reasonable to continue living there. But suing over disrepair is difficult and you have to prove actual loss or injury, so I decided not to bother.
I was locked into a 12 month fixed term tenancy and took legal advice about breaking the agreement - I just wanted out but couldn't afford to risk losing my deposit or being made liable for rent on two houses. Found out that my deposit should have been in a protection scheme which seemed like a good thing what with my criminally negligent landlady and all that. I wrote to the letting agent who had it and asked him to put it in a scheme and heard nothing. So I started court action against the landlady and letting agent in January asking for my deposit to be put in a scheme and for the 3x deposit penalty to be paid to me. The agent just refused point blank to protect it despite the legislation requiring him to.
I managed to move out when the tenancy ended in March and the letting agent gave me my deposit back a week later. The court hearing is coming up this friday and I have cold feet and feel like I should maybe drop it. But then I think, hell, they could have killed one of us with their penny pinching and refusal to do repairs, they should bloody face some sort of consequence. But then I think, well, its past now, I had the money back in the end, I'm well out of the house and situation, why not just let it rest.