‘When will rogue letting agents be stopped from ripping us off?’

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Question is asked by group of landlords in Ipswich after rent payments due to them were used to prop up a failing property firm.

Landlords
in Ipswich are fuming after losing hundreds of pounds in rent to a rogue
letting agent and say they have been ‘failed by the system’ after her company’s
liquidators returned as little as 3.5% of the money owed to one landlord.

After the collapse of Jonathan
Waters Estate Agents, an Insolvency Service investigation discovered that owner
Jane Russell hadn’t put tenants’ deposits into a protection scheme or kept
rents in a separate bank account.

The company had collected just
over £7,000 of rent from tenants between March and August 2018. This should
have been paid over to the tenants’ landlords but had instead been spent in the
general running costs of the business.

The agency also had no record of
11 tenants’ deposits totalling £12,000 that had been received between March and
August 2018, while tenants’ deposits received between April 2017 and August
2018, that added up to £20,000, hadn’t been paid in either.

Anthony
Molyneux, whose tenant paid £975 to the Russell in May 2017, says he received
just £35 back from liquidators. Another Ipswich landlord, who asked not to be
named, received just a few pounds back from his tenant’s deposit.

Rob Sheils, senior investigator
for the Insolvency Service, says: “A fundamental part of Jane Russell’s role
was being responsible for safeguarding money on behalf of her tenants and
landlords, something she failed to do prior to the company falling into
liquidation.

“This disqualification should
serve as a deterrent to other directors who safeguard money from doing
likewise.”

Russell was banned
for five years from managing companies.

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