Late rent payments and no inspections what would you do?

Breach of contract, breach of service.I would fire them and ask tenants to pay you directly and carry out your own inspections.

Have you complained in writing to them every time rent payment was late? Asked for inspection reports as per contract?

How long have you employed them?

Breach of contract can be done via MCOL if not looking for big money compensation.

Need to do a letter before action but check your buildings insurance legal cover as you may be covered for legal costs.

Report to their trade associations and to a Trading Standards.

Inform your tenant in writing that you will be takin* over the management as from xyz and give them a standing order form for the rent for their bank. Get then to cancel the payment to the letting agent. Then let the letting agent know that you are rescinding the contract on the same date, or before, and state the reasons and that you require the deposit held on protection to be forwarded to you/ your protection service under reference abc.

I reckon there’s only one quality agent out of 20 on average who fully executes their obligations to the client-us.
Unless you live too far away, I would self-manage, or at least inspect. We just had an incident where a dining room ceiling part collapsed out of the blue while children were in the room, due mainly perhaps to where children had been persistently running on a specific part of the floor above. We have maintained the house well and undertaken repairs without delay, recently replacing windows for example. The ceilings were typical of an early 1920s post- Edwardian house.
There is no way that I would leave an agent to handle the investigation, quotation from multiple contractors, specification, schedule of work and also the monitoring of it to quantify the extent of works required once the likes of lath and joists were exposed.
My duty was to ensure beyond all reasonable doubt that all remedial works plus an inspection of all other ceilings was carried out by an experienced plastering contractor and a structural engineer in order to ensure 99.9% that we could satisfy our tenants’ safety.
Do you really think any agent is going to go to similar lengths and, if they did, they would obviously be acting as a middle-man, with countless emails flying in all directions.
I completely agree with David.

Make a formal complaint to them in writing. If you don’t get a satisfactory response, escalate the matter to whichever redress scheme they belong to.

Did the agent deal with a deposit, and if so did they protect it? I would want to know that if I was thinking of claiming compensation from them. If they didn’t you could be in for a big bill if the tenant took you to court.

Ask them for their complaints procedure and also send a request for all the related tenancy paperwork in digital or hard copy or both and tell them you’re conducting a compliance audit quoting UK GDPR Article 28(3). You are the data controller and legally entitled to all of the information they hold on the tenancy and they have 10 working days to supply it to you otherwise you will escalate it to their redress scheme.
That should shake their feathers.

If you have the tenants details, i would check the deposit has been protected. Then give the tenants your bank details and ask them to pay you directly. Then go through the agents complaints procedure and if no luck Ombudsman

Are they one of these small independent agencies. I wouldnt touch them. I’ve only ever used main large estate agents in the past and never had an issue. I self manage now however