Deposit Return - how long should we wait?

[Harimad]

Hiya,

Wonder if any landlords / other tenants can help.

We rented a private house back in March with a 6 month contract (because the letting agent said 'no-one ever wants to let for just 6 months', then of course our landlady who previously lived in the house got £££££ in front of her eyes and decided she wanted to sell up!

We finished our tenancy on 4th Oct, and were checked out by the same inventory company that checked us in - there were some minor cleaning costs they wanted covered which we agreed to out of our deposit (held with The Deposit Protection scheme).

Two weeks later, the cleaning work had been done and we thought our deposit would be cleared to be returned, but our landlady came back with some other issues that she wants us to pay for.

I'm of the opinion that if it wasn't listed on the checkout report, then she doesn't have a case, and we applied to the TDS to return our money (hoping this would impose some timescale on a resolution), but it's another 2 weeks later now and we've had no clarification from the landlady as to all the 'issues' she has, or how much she wants us to give her (not that I'm agreeing to give her more anyway!).

Does anyone know what sort of timescale we should be looking at if it goes to tribunal?
Shouldn't we have a date of resolution now that we've been out of the propery for nearly a month??

Please please advise - the TDS website lists nothing about timings and the only thing I can find is something on the Govt site saying that monies should be returned by 10 days after the end of tenancy, but doesn't include anything regarding if there are problems...

Thanks!
Hari.

I had a feeling that it has to be resolved within 4 weeks or 30 days unless a formal dispute has been set up. You're getting very close to that - I don't think many LLs conform to ten days. I would contact the TDS by phone for advice - ours was very good when we had a query.

I tend to agree that the landlady will have trouble enforcing anything not on the inventory and should have given you details of her complaints by now anyway. Make sure that you have final bill statements you can wave at her as this seems to be a delaying tactic used by some.

Thanks Lala (did send thanks before, I thought, but it's not here).
Phoned the DPS and we have to fill in a statutory declaration and from when they receive that it should be 14 days to a resolution...

Still haven't had the list of issues / costs from her, but am going to detail everything and send it in with the inventory results etc...