I say ex-tenant owes me £5,000 unpaid rent, they claim they don’t?

Hi, This has been an ongoing situation. I’m a portfolio landlord and use property management companies to manage my buildings. During May 2020, I changed property manager and this is when I started having issues with a tenant not paying rent.

Because this was COVID we didn’t get it to court until December 2021 and due to an administrative error it was thrown out and I was unable to gain access to the property until February 2022.

Out of the blue, I got a council tax bill for the property for the period of May 2020 – April 2021, as well as a bill for May 2021 to April 2022. The same time the tenant has not been paying rent they have not been paying council tax.

Unfortunately, according to the council, this person is claiming they didn’t live there and moved out in May 2020. I’m not sure what they did to make the council believe them but the council let them off the hook and put me on it, so I had to pay 2 years of council tax totalling nearly £3,000.

I have not had contact with the tenant directly ever, and I had no issues until 2020 when they became completely uncontactable. I was willing to let the whole thing go because I finally got access to my property back and it was COVID and I wanted to just move on.

But now the tenant is making me pay their personal bills, I want to pursue them for the £10k+ arrears from May 2020 to February 2022. I have already instructed a tracing agent, I am just nervous this could cost more in legal fees than I may recover as they have already hoodwinked the council, I am concerned they could hoodwink the courts too.

How should I proceed?

Thank you,

Michelle