Landlord Breached Contract

[Bellalunagirl]

Please help if you can we are in a tight spot and not sure what our rights are - thank you

Background: we signed a contract with the letting agent ages ago to move in this week. Agent contacts us this week to say we can't move into the house on the agreed date as its not ready. Turns out one of the workman has tested positive for covid so apparently they have to deep clean before they can finish off the property for us to move in. They want to delay by a couple of weeks.

This puts us in a really bad spot. We are moving to a new area and kids are due to start school the following week. So we can't delay move. We are desperately looking for an AirBnB to cover the gap but we have no guarentee that it will be ready on the new date.

Told we can't claim costs as its due to covid. We have paid the deposit and first months rent. We have a signed contract.

Where do we stand? what can we do.

I’m both a tenant and a landlord as it happens, just thought I’d mention it in case you hadn’t considered it. I hope you get it all sorted.

Thisismytimetoshine

Totally barking up the wrong tree with that one I'm afraid. But thanks for all your contributions to this thread, they've been so useful.

Swooningmonkey it's a good point though, so worth mentioning.

Thanks to all those who've offered useful advice.