Property "management" agency not paying us (landlords) rent from tenants - please advise

[BodminPill]

I am at my wits end and am hoping that someone on here can advise me of my options on how to proceed.

My husband and I are currently living overseas for a few years for work and are renting out our property until we return to the UK.

We signed up with a local estate agents/property management company to manage the property for us so we didn't have to deal with finding tenants etc.

Over the previous 12 months they were late in transferring the tenants rent to us several times and we had to chase them for the money. After this happened for the fifth time we cancelled their services and have signed up with a different agent.

We are owed the last months rent from our tenants along with their deposit money (not paid into the appropriate scheme by the way) but have yet to be paid by them. We have now been chasing them for 2 months, but nothing.

The staff in the office say that they keep mentioning it to the boss/owner as he is the only one who can do the money transfers and there is nothing more that they can do.

We know from our new agency that they have recently taken on several new landlords who have transferred from the same crap agents for lack of rent payment so this is clearly a big problem there.

What can we do to pursue them for the money as phone calls and emails are not working?

Small claims court, I guess. I feel your pain. It wasn't a Yorkshire company was it?

Trading Standards ? It is illegal for them not to have put deposit into a scheme but think you would be liable if the tenants pursued it. are they members of ARLA or NAEA ?

Nursery Not Yorkshire, no. Sorry you have experience of this also . Not sure about small claims court as we live overseas, but will go down that route if that's the only option left after all else fails, thank you.

LIZS We've had to pay the tenants deposit for them out of our own pockets to the new letting agents (where it has been approriately submitted) so that we can move forward.

They are not members of ARLA or NAEA but are members of The Proprty Ombudsman. I have written to the latter organization and am awaiting a response. I hadn't thought about Trading Standards so they will be my next port of call, thanks.