UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hi everyone.

Hope everyone is safe in this difficult situation.

Have rented our house last year, and was late in registering the deposit into a scheme by 2 months. There is no dispute that we failed to protect the deposit within the time scale due to mitigating circumstances, but as soon as it was brought to our attention by our tenants we entered it into the scheme the same day. (We normally rent our property  through an agent but we thought because it was our house we'd managed it ourselves)
We have provided the tenants the prescribed information, deposit scheme certificate and addendum as soon as it was protected.
But after 4 months the tenants abandoned the property with no formal notice, no forwarding address, leaving outstanding council tax and utility bills, with still 2 months left in the contract.
We received a letter from their solicitor claiming £1300 (£650 x2) for late deposit protection.

Your thoughts and comments are much appreciated.

How much is the rent for the final two months (assuming you didn't re-let the property within that time)? If it's about the same as your erstwhile tenants are claiming in respect of the late protection, it seems like the most sensible thing would be to offer to call it quits.

I would try as Simon suggested. Only potential problem I can see is that if you had accepted possession after they ran, and let it out again, their tenancy ended (early) and they were no longer liable for rent.