Increase in rent puts deposit in arrears? ...oh really?!

[to3m]

I've been renting my current place for 2.5 years and I've been given notice of a rent increase. This doesn't make me overjoyed, but rents have been fairly flat for years so I suppose it was inevitable, and the property still represents fair value for money. What I wasn't expecting though was for the notice to be accompanied by a bill for £40-odd from the landlord's agents, because the deposit I paid no longer represents 1.5 months' rent!

Personally I consider this to be a bit much, so I'm going to start out by refusing to pay this particular charge (the deposit was already £1,000 - plenty to be getting on with) and then I'll see what happens!

Am I being overly sensitive, or is this extra little charge as cheeky as I think it is?!

[XJSJohn]

Your deposit is usually X number of weeks / months rent, if the rent goes up by Y a week / month then the deposit should go up by a corresponding ammount.

Equally if your rent goes down then your deposit should also go down and some monies returned.

This is normal. (Speaking as both landlord and tennant)

[Wings]

Was your initial Deposit protected under the DPS, what type of tenancy do you have, an Assured Shorthold Tenancy Agreement or a Periodic Tenancy, if the former what was the starting date for the same, and how long until the end of the same.

Out of interest what was the percentage increase of the rent, and what type of notice were you given before the new rental increase was to be implemented?

[to3m]

Thanks for the replies! If this is all perfectly standard then I guess I'll have to just suck it up. I never considered the bond as continuously proportional to the rent, thinking of it as just some multiple of the initial rent as a starting figure (it could just as easily be a nice round £1,000 or whatever) - but if people think of it some other way, then I suppose I will have to too. (I'm not normally a dick about this stuff, but this comes on top of what was an outsized deposit in the first place, and the agents wouldn't budge on standing order date, so when I was working full-time the rent would come out just before I got paid. So when it comes to giving the agents more money, I'm just not really interested )

As for the tenancy, it is a periodic one, and the deposit is protected I believe. Why do you ask? - I'm not bothered about challenging the rent increase, it's just the increase in deposit size that's got me all riled up! The increase is just shy of 4% (3.89% or something like that) and the notice consisted just of a letter about 6-7 weeks ahead of the rent increase, plus some bumf that they forgot to put in. I'm still waiting on that bit...

Edited by to3m on Friday 14th January 22:50

[Wings]

If you accept the rental increase and you have been given the statuary one months notice, then all one needs to do is to ensure that the increase in the Deposit is recorded under the Deposit Protection Scheme.

You should have been notified at the outset of the tenancy, that both your Deposit had been protected and of the scheme under the DPS the Deposit was registered with, confirmation of this can be requested when asking for the increase in the Deposit being recorded.

It is worth noting that where a LL/LA has failed to protect a Deposit, a section 21 Notice (termination notice) can not be served by the LL/LA against the tenant.

I myself would not ask a tenant to increase their Deposit during a request for an increase in rent, but for completeness I can quite understand a LL/LA requesting the same.