UK Landlord Forum / Life

hello
we are new on hear, can any help or suggest any answers,

our tenants who are on an assured tenacy, ( we do this through a letting agents) owe us over £4000.00 they lost there job, the letting agent let it get to this amount, not us!! we were away from uk at this time, only came back august 10 the tenant cant pay any money in arrears, they were spending the money the council were paying them ie our rent, the council is involved now but wont pay us the arrears, the council wont rehome them as they have a home-ours!!, we are serving the 2nd section 8 this is what the agent  has told us, we stopped all work on property due to arrears-tenants got evironmetal people on us and a date was set to do work, we have nearly completed costing us on top of arrears, section 8 is £500.00 letter from solicitor, through agent, we gave tenant time to sort out finances last year, no arrears came forward hense section 8 last year never got fully issued, please help we think agent should be paying us rent arrears and or solicitor fee, this may take a long time to get court date then eviction, tenant told us through agents to evict them so they can get cheaper house. agent didnt even meet evironmental people at our house to represent us, agent said they didnt know! crap ! environmental person said email and letter went to agent tenant and us and they had confirmation of recieving email, where do we stand, can we get any money back from any one, thanks. oh and they changed the locks and left an inside door outside to rot.
any help would be grateful, thank you.

Ensuring that residents to the tenant to whom the work units so that they have enough position in the payment of monthly rent, ensuring that residents have a good background, is usually not an individual who is in constant financial problems.

I had a similar situation but I was managing the property not the agent. I had a rent arrears of nearly £8K and a tenant that refused to move out. I was advised to serve a section 21 for possession and a section 8 for the rent arrears.In your case it could take ages to sort this all out and in the mean time you are losing money. I would serve the section 21 for possession which I know a court would grant.I know that seems like playing into the tenants hand but you have to think about your property as a business. I would then move on to look at the contract you have with the agent and seek legal advice as to who is responsible for payment of the rent arrears. It sounds as though the agent has been negligent on this count and I would want to see all the letters of correspondence  between the agent and the tenant, the agent and the council etc. Hope that helps.