How to deal with incorrect licence advice from agent?

How to deal with incorrect licence advice from agent?

11:16 AM, 14th July 2017, About 8 years ago 13

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My wife and I are expats who have been renting our property through an agent for 5 years. We currently own a four bedroom property (for bedrooms including a loft extensions).

In October 2016, the previous tenants move out and the current occupants moved in. We were sent the documents with a recommendation that we sign. On the agreement were five as opposed to four tenants. The agent gave us no advice on the implications of having 5 tenants. We later discussed that having 5 tenants changed our license from a statutory to a mandatory licence (the mandatory license treated our property the same way as a 3 – 5 floor block of flats). We contacted the agent with this information, and asked them to clarify if we have the right license. They refused to reply to our emails. Three months after the initial email they replied (only after I cced an email to everyone in the organisation).

The advice we received was that we should not have informed the council (which was tantamount to them telling us to break the law). They are now refusing to allow us to cancel the terms of the lease (even though we have agreed to a cancellation with the tenants with an agreement that their rent would be reduced for four months).

The questions I have are:
1. Legally what can we do in this situation?
2. Can we take action against the agents in relation to the original lease agreement. (Surely as experts they should have provided us with advice in terms of having an extra tenant).

Many thanks

Emmanuel


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emmanuel robert

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13:05 PM, 16th July 2017, About 8 years ago

The contract will finish on the 28th. We need to see if we can keep the tenants without paying a fee.

Darren Peters

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14:15 PM, 16th July 2017, About 8 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "emmanuel robert" at "16/07/2017 - 13:05":

What does your contract with the agent say about this?

Rob Crawford

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12:29 PM, 17th July 2017, About 8 years ago

It sounds like you have a normal AST in place. The main issue here is that the agent has place one more tenant into your property than you have instructed. So my response would be to write a formal letter to the agent and demand that one of the tenants is removed. If this is ignored repeat the process, this time via solicitor (£200). You then have an audit trail of demands that will be your mitigation should the Council wish to prosecute you (yes, you not the agent as they act on your behalf!). Ideally you will have stated the max number of tenants in your terms of business with the agents. This agreement is what you need to present to the ombudsman. Assuming your facts are correct, do not be scared of making a complaint to the Ombudsman. The penalties that agents now face if they loose a case with the Ombudsman are quite high and I suspect that the agent will contact you very quickly to settle the issue. Unfortunately the complaints process takes time so you need to continue pushing the agent to remove the fifth tenant.

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