Landlord Briefing

This briefing note is intended to provide advice and guidance to landlords affected by the demise of Thomas and Company Rentals, letting agents who were based in Milton keynes and Northampton.

Legal Obligations

The first thing all landlords need to do is ensure they comply with their legal obligations.  The primary obligations are as follows:

1. Register your deposit with a deposit protection scheme - In the latter stages of the business notice was served on Thomas and Company Rentals from their deposit protection scheme that they were in default of the scheme requirements and the deposits were to be taken off cover as a result.  The scheme should have also written to all landlords affected, but there is no guarantee this happened.  If you want to check whether the deposit is protected then you will need to write to all of the schemes, providing evidence that you are the landlord (usually a copy of the certificate of title which can be downloaded from the land registry website will suffice), asking them to confirm if the deposit is protected with them.  However, the safest bet is to assume it is not and register it.  If the deposit is not registered the tenant can sue for a sum equivalent to 4 times the deposit.  Notice of where it is registered has to be served on the tenant(s) and whoever paid the deposit in the first place.
2. Make sure you have a valid gas safety check certificate - if you have any doubts about this then obtain a new one.  If you do not have a copy of the current certificate you may be able to obtain this from your tenant(s).  Rumours abound about whether gas safety checks arranged by Thomas and Company Rentals were valid.  If you have a gas safety certificate you should go onto the Gas Safe website to check if this was obtained through a registered engineer.  If it was not or you are unsure we recommend you arrange a new gas safety check immediately.

The easiest way to comply with the above is through an established letting agent.  Having been burnt once you may be reluctant to use another agent.  However, it is very rare that they fail and a good agent can be worth their weight in gold.  Both Lenwell in Northampton and Belvoir in Milton Keynes hold pretty much every certification letting agents can hold, are members or ARLA (Association of Residential Letting Agents) and have made clear that they are here to help you.

If you want to do it yourself then the Gas Safe website above will allow you to search for a local engineer to arrange a gas safety check and MyDeposits.co.uk can be contacted about registering the deposit as protected.  However, the likelihood is that any deposit held by Thomas and Company Rentals will have been lost and you will be obliged to replace this in due course.

Legal issues with tenants

It is almost certain that all tenancies will be assured shorthold tenancies.  Generally, to recover possession of a property you need to have a copy of the tenancy agreement and serve notice on the tenant(s).  If you do not have a copy of the paperwork for the property and the tenancy agreement then you should contact Robert Cairncross at Trading Standards on 01908 252807.  Apparently Trading Standards have seized most of Thomas and Company Rentals' paperwork as part of their investigation.

You cannot work on the basis that any notices that should have been served have been served.  This means you are unlikely to be able to rely on any ground for possession which required service of a notice on the tenant(s) before the start of the tenancy and should re-serve any subsequent notice seeking possession and wait the further period required unless you have proof that it was served.

If you are unable to obtain copy paperwork from trading standards then the tenants may be another source to use.  You should also consider contacting them to check if they have proof that they paid their rent, as just because Thomas and Company Rentals failed to pay this to you does not mean it was not paid to them.

Legal issues with Thomas and Company Rentals

Various landlords have already started legal proceedings.  It may be best to see how those proceedings progress before others start to jump on the bandwagon.

The indication is that Paul Collins and Louisa Thompson may go bankrupt.  The down side is that in bankruptcy and considerable amount of charges are usually levied by the trustee in bankruptcy before anyone gets paid anything.  The up side is that in bankruptcy steps taken to hide asssets in the last 2 years can be undone, which means the sooner bankruptcy happens the better.

It has been reported that Paul Collins is trying to sell his house.  Action needs to be taken before he does this and disappears with the money.  The best way to do this is by a representative action, as we will now set out.

Firstly, if anyone who has already issued proceedings wishes to continue with these they should do so.  The goal is to obtain a judgment against both Paul Collins and Louisa Thompson for a sum in excess of £750.  Where proceedings are issued for less than £5,000 the legal costs are very limited as litigants are supposed to be able to deal with these claims without legal representation, so the costs can be kept down.

Secondly, statutory demands need to be served on Paul Collins and (possibly) Louisa Thompson. Paul Collins should be the main target because he appears to have equity in a house.  You do not need to have a court judgment before you do this.  If you cannot serve them in person then it is permissible to serve these at their last known address provided you can show that it is likely to be received by them (usually by neighbours confirming that they have been back).  If anyone does manage to serve them personally it would be sensible for them to serve for everyone where possible and a "group" arrangement would be sensible (see below).  Once either of them has been served and the period to comply with the demand has expired then bankruptcy proceedings should be issued.  We do not recommend you do this yourself.  It is too easy to get things wrong.  We strongly recommend you instruct a lawyer to do this for you.  If they then pay the person who issued the petition the money they owe them then anyone else who has served a statutory demand which has expired can then apply to step in and take over the bankruptcy proceedings.

If either of them are made bankrupt it would be the decent thing to try and let as many people as possible know so they can bring their claim in the bankruptcy.  However, the more people claim the less each individual will recover (if anything).

Where either of them is made bankrupt it draws a line under their liabilities and once the bankruptcy has ended you cannot pursue them for monies owed when they became bankrupt.  If, however, either of them do not go bankrupt you have up to 6 years to sue them for breach of contract and, if you get judgment, up to 6 years to then enforce any judgment.  There is no reason why you cannot sit back, wait for them to get back on their feet and then sue them.

Future progress and funding legal action

This web page has limited accessibility for a reason.  We strongly recommend you stop putting information in a public forum such as Facebook because anyone can read it, including Paul Collins and Louisa Thompson.  If you use a simple programme such as DropBox then you can try and control who has access to information and try and keep the information within your group.

Legal proceedings can be expensive.  Arguably it would unfair to let one individual run proceedings and incur legal costs while everyone else reaps the potential benefit.  You may also find that people are reluctant to pursue the matter if they are doing it on their own.  For the group as a whole the best thing would be for everyone to take responsibility for service of the statutory demands and to agree a lead claim to issue bankruptcy proceedings.  It would then be sensible to agree a level of contribution from each member of the group to the costs of the bankruptcy proceedings.  What arrangements are made are entirely a matter for the group itself, but there is no reason why entry into the DropBox group cannot be limited to those who are prepared to contribute.

This is the end of the briefing note.  You will appreciate that this is generic advice provided to all landlords.  Should further legal action be required, either to recover possession of your properties or against Paul Collins or Louisa Thompson then we would be happy to assist in this.  However, that will be professional work for which we will charge.

We are here to help 24 hours a day 365 days a year.  Either e-mail us anytime, call (01296) 662770 (Nick) or (01525) 373322 (Richard) during the normal working day or (07973) 424178 in an emergency.