UK Landlord Forum / Life

Any advice would be gratefully received.
My letting agent went bankrupt and it seems that despite saying he had, he had not protected the tenants deposits. The tenants are hassling us, we know we are liable but are waiting for the receiver to confirm no protection. The tenants have now not paid their rent for this month  and are already in arrears as did not pay rent for last dec (2011). They say they paid the arrears in May and the letting agent was due to pay us in July but agent went bankrupt before paying that and Julys rent.
What can we do if anything Pls.
Claire

Are/were all payments coming to you via the now bankrupt agent, or were they being paid directly to you?

Sometimes the agent does take responsibility for protecting the deposit.  Did you have in writing from them that they would be doing this?  If you did then I would not have thought you were liable.  The problem would be for the agent's liquidators to address, so your tenants should probably approach them rather than you.  That is my best guess anyway, and is how I would try to steer things.

Before the days of compulsory deposit protection I had my fingers burnt by this sort of thing.  It was in my early and "green behind the ears" days of letting out property.  I used an agent who later went out of business, and went to ground taking many tenants' deposits and rent for landlords with him.  Looking back on it, he was a slippery character, and just the sort of reason this legislation was necessary.  Fortunately, I was in the position in those days where I could cover the deposit for my own very good tenant from my own funds, so to avoid conflict that was what I did.  You may not have to though, if you can prove that the fault lies with the defunct agent.