Hide and seek with deposit

[Hawkmoth]

This is one hell of a muddy situation and I'm hoping someone on here will be able to she'd some light on it. I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that we will have to go to court, but who is liable? The following timeline is compiled from conversations with the parties involved.

July 2008 - move into rental property and pay deposit to letting agents
Letting agents pass deposit to Mr B
Mr M is owner of the house and it goes into receivership in 2012
We pass details of deposit to new property management company and assume that they will transfer it across
We pay rent to property management company
We move out, property management company does inspection, no grounds to retain any of the deposit
We subsequently contact PM company, they do not have deposit
Letting agents do not have deposit, they passed it onto the landlord
Receivers referred query to PM company

I have the strong feeling that the owner of the property had rent paid to a friend who then paid or didn't pay the mortgage so that Mr M wasn't liable for the tax.

I can't quite figure out who is liable for this. It's clear that the deposit NEVER went into a secure scheme, so the LA, Mr B and Mr M are at fault. But the PM company should have tracked it down, so they were at fault. And then... Do the receivers come into play, should we chase it through them?

It's not an insubstantial amount of money, especially when my work have cocked up my latest pay packet before I my maternity leave is up. Awful.

Who is Mr B in all this? There was a thread along similar lines a few months ago and it turns out that the owner of the house (even if they have been led to believe that the deposit has been paid into a scheme etc) is responsible for repaying it if it hasn't been. I would therefore guess that the receivers acting for the bank (which has repo'ed the property if I understand your post correctly) should be liable.

Is there anything in the original contract showing that a deposit was paid? Do you have it all signed off? Is there no mention of which scheme it was to be held in in the contract?

No mention of scheme. We do have proof that we paid it to letting agent.

Mr B is who the LA put down as landlord, but Mr M was owner. Rent was paid to him for some nefarious no doubt reason.

Do you think a letter to the receivers might help?

If your Landlord hasn't registered your deposit with one of the three deposit schemes you can claim up to three times the amount from the Landlord. You need to find out if it's held by the schemes first. The tenancy deposit scheme is one, a quick google will tell you the others. You can check on their website if they're holding your deposit.

That's your first step.

It's not held by any of the three schemes. We phoned them all just to be sure. It's as big a fuckup as the house we rented.

I'd get in touch with the receivers - to them it will just be another expense they have to administer.

Did you have a new agreement when the landlord changed ? Technically you could reclaim up to 3 times the deposit via the courts if they failed to meet their obligations
www.gov.uk/tenancy-deposit-protection/information-landlords-must-give-tenants
but am not sure exactly who would be liable , presumably 1st ll if that was whom your agreement was with. The LA must have had some authority to pay Mr B not Mr M. There is a 4th scheme named on that link which might be worth a try.

Well Shelter have said to first try the original LA and named landlord. We will write to the owner as well.

Probably will be a long game but the law is on our side.