Hunting around online and time to return deposit seems to fairly straightforward, 10-14 days after agreement of any deductions.

However, when tenants vacate without agreeing deductions there and then how long does the landlord have to issue any deductions etc? New tenants moved straight in after the old ones left, but landlord has not returned deposit or made contact to advise. One agent mate told me 6 weeks but I can’t find anything to coroberate that, anyone know for definite?

Property was vacated over 6 weeks ago.

Have you contacted the Landlord? Seems the obvious answer.

On another note don’t vacate without doing the checkout in person or at least doing your own with pics and send it on to the landlord agent to cover yourself.

Where is your deposit held? DPS? I’d be raising it with them if you vacated over 6 weeks ago.

Are you the tenant or landlord in this scenario ?

If the landlord has done it properly there should be no doubt, the scheme they have used will have full info on what you need to do, the landlord should have told you what deposit scheme they have used.

If they haven’t used a scheme and haven’t returned your deposit you have 3 months (I think) to apply to your county court, and stand to get the full deposit plus a couple of months rent as compensation that your landlord is a twonk.

And if you are the landlord, get in touch with the scheme of if you held the deposit yourself for shame on you, and phone your lawyer. Or just give the money back to the tenants today while you still can !

I’m neither, I’d have done it properly if I was!

I’m just looking for advice if anyone knew the exact answer to the question as it seems like there’s not much in the way of info on it as it’s obviously quite rare a scenario. Just trying to help someone and was trying to qualify the exact position. STW is normally pretty good at being Landlordtrackworld!

Well if they are tenants I’d stick with my original advice and call the landlord unless you are now looking for legal options. I think there is plenty written under the DPS rules online so probably worth a google.

General rule is that the inspection is done on the day of leaving and handing the keys back, take photos as proof. Agree any deductions there and then and get them in writing. You should then get the deposit back withing 14 days.

IF you don;t get the deposit back in time then contact the DPS it was lodged with to start the mediation procedure, if it wasn’t lodged with one then you’ll need to look into the options for reporting the landlord for failure of legal duty Govt Advice

My last couple, we inspect the property together with the tenant a couple of days before moving, if anything is broken or missing I expect it is fixed by the tenants before handover, explaining how much cheaper it is for them to Diy rather than me to pay a tradesman. This usually does the trick and there are no deductions necessary. Then, on the day, we sit down together again and phone the council, gas, electric, water and tv/phone/net, closing accounts and giving forwarding addresses. Once that’s done, we log on to depositprotection.com and release the deposit. With fancy phones and tablets, there’s no reason not to do it there and then when taking keys back.

Drag this one back up again, the saga has carried on a bit and there is finally a notification of deposit return, along with a list of deductions which pretty much use it all up.

One of them is a compensation for the new tenants as their move in was delayed due to objects being left in the property after the end of the tenancy (which there wasn’t) Any hive thoughts on this? Google fu failing me slightly but Im going to guess this isn’t what the deposit should be used for – at best there could be a daily charge of the rent for storage?

Deposit protection scheme ? Open a dispute with them if not a gentle letter to landlord asking for the DPS details.