FreeLegalWeb

Tenancy deposit arbitration or ADR – help at last!

Are you a landlord? Have you had a dispute over a tenancy deposit go to arbitration? Did you lose when you felt you ought to have won? If so you are no longer alone. Tom Deritt of ADR Solutions, who contacted me recently, is on your side.

ADR stands for Alternative Dispute Resolution also called arbitration. One of the selling points of the new tenancy deposit schemes, was always the free quick and easy arbitration service.  No more time consuming and expensive county court claims.  A quick ADR with your answer back in a couple of weeks.

But after an experience of the ADR procedure, many landlords are not happy.  We have featured quite a few of these complaints on the Landlord Law Blog.  However a big problems is that many landlords do not appreciate that the starting point for the arbitrator is that the tenancy deposit is the tenants money not the landlords, and they also do not understand what they need to do to prove their case.

“Until recently” Tom told me, “I worked as an adjudicator for one of the deposit protection schemes. I found myself increasingly concerned at the number of cases where I suspected that the landlord or agent probably deserved the money they were requesting, but where I couldn’t award the full amount because the evidence submitted did not justify the claim.

Only this week, My Deposits announced that landlords only succeed or partially succeed in 51% of cases. The figures unquestionably show that in 49% of disputed deposits, the landlord comes away with absolutely nothing. I don’t accept that in half of the cases referred to ADR, the landlord does not deserve anything at all. “

So he decided to do something about it.  The result is a new web-site www.adrsolution.co.uk, where, for as little as £50 you can get Tom, or one of his colleagues, to check over your paperwork (as all these cases are decided just on the paperwork) and advise whether or not you have a good case.

Sounds like a good idea to me (although not perhaps if the disputed sum is only £4.20!)

What do you think?  Is this service going to provide a need among landlords?  Please let us have your comments.  And if you use the service, let us know how you get on.