When should my rental deposit be repaid? AWOL landlord

[Chillian]

The last day of my tenancy was Thursday 7th July. I rented off a private landlord through an estate agency.

The deposit is in a protection scheme.

The estate agency say they haven’t been able to get hold of the landlord; she isn’t returning their calls about how much deposit she is happy to return.

Am I right in thinking the deposit needs to be returned within ten working days - so by this Thursday?

If you aren't having any luck you might need to just claim the lot through the deposit protection scheme. However this can be a long process if they object. If a request has been made the landlord should return it within 10 days unless there is a dispute.

Contact the deposit scheme. In the case of an awol landlord they should just return the money in full. Deposit protection schemes work on the assumption that deposits are returned in full unless the landlord proves that you owe them.

It’s ten working days to be notified of a dispute.
id call your agent and say if no response by 9am tomorrow you’ll be raising it with the protection scheme.
that is a slow process though as they will want to get the landlords response.

You can trigger the return with the deposit scheme directly. Then it's up to the landlord to dispute, if they don't do anything it'll be returned.

Do you have the details of the deposit scheme? If so there’s no need to liaise with the agent or landlord. Just log in now and request return of the full deposit. The landlord will have a fixed period of time to raise any objection, if they don’t you’ll get it all back.

I had good relationships with my landlords and this is what I did. All turned out fine.

You should have been provided with full details of the deposit protection at the beginning of the tenancy. Usually the protection service used write to the tenant direct, and it is also up to the agent to provide full details to the tenant.

If the agent didn't provide such details then you should get on to them and request the information.

Claim it back through the deposit protection scheme. My last landlord tried to make all sorts of claims against my deposit when I moved out. I sent them the original inventory as proof that the "damages" were there when I moved in and both they and the agent went AWOL. I finally put in a claim through the deposit protection scheme and had it returned in full when they also failed to respond to that. I think it only took a few weeks from making the claim.