Does this give me some leverage?

[Shortbread36]

Just moved out of a rental. Had agreed with agent to leave keys in property on final day of tenancy. Day BEFORE tenancy ended I dropped by to find they had already been in and taken all the sets of keys (I wasn’t sure if I’d been burgled or what). They subsequently confirmed by email that they had taken them.

Now looking at the list of unreasonable excuses to withhold my deposit (grass not “lush” FFS). Can I use the fact that they illegally entered the property without 24 hrs notice as leverage in my fight to get deposit back?

If I've learnt anything about deposits it's the burden of proof lays with the agent/landlord. They have to proove guilt rather than you proove your innocence.

Do you have a copy of the inventory report? If it doesn't state clearly that the grass was "lush" when you moved in then they can't prove you've left it in a less "lush" state when you moved out.

Agree with PP. Also, who has ‘lush’ grass this side of a hot summer?!

Have documented grass conditons throughout the drought, am ready for that one. But they’re also complaining about minor wear and tear items which will no doubt result in a lot of back and forth and I’ll be penalised . Meanwhile as far as I understand, they breached the contract by entering without notice but apparently there is no penalty for them? If I had left, say private health- related documents on the kitchen counter surely this would have been pretty egregious?

Worth a try

The Deposit Protection scheme won't care a jot who broke what terms of the contract. They're not there to consider who broke what rules.

They only care about what it looked like before, and what it looks like now. How detailed is your inventory? Does it have lots of photos? Does it mention how clean everything is? They will NOT expect your garden to be 'lush'; you can argue that it's a wasteful use of water during shortages, and that it's been well maintained (haven't we had FOUR heatwaves this summer? You can point that out). They generally side with the tenant when it comes to wear and tear if it's reasonable, in my opinion. LL's try to claim the most absurd things as being the fault of the tenant ('threadbare carpet after 12 year tenancy' would be a good example); they literally have a list of things with life expectancy against them, so they don't suffer fools gladly with LLs trying to claim ridiculous things (some other examples: the odd knock in the wall/skirting board, flaking paint on a window frame, water stains on blinds).

It really all comes down to the quality of your inventory. The worse the inventory, the less firm ground the LL has to stand on.

My inventory mentions ONE room as being clean. No mention of the general cleanliness of the property, no photos of the inside of a clean oven, clean windows, etc. Which means I'm perfectly within my rights to leave the other 7 rooms absolutely filthy if I want to.

I won't, cos I'm not like that. But a really detailed inventory is important and mine was clearly done by an estate agent, not an inventory clerk.