What a check-in report needs to survive adjudication

Deposit adjudication has one feature that decides most cases before anybody reads the photographs: the burden sits with the landlord. The scheme puts it plainly — the onus is on the landlord to prove a legitimate claim to a share of the deposit, and the tenant has no obligation to prove their position at all.

That single sentence explains almost every unsuccessful claim. It is not that the adjudicator sided with the tenant. It is that nothing was put in front of them that made the landlord’s case, so the default won.

What a good check-in report is actually for

It exists to answer one question at the end of the tenancy: what was the condition of this item when the tenant took the keys? Everything else in the document is supporting material. If it cannot answer that for the item in dispute — this carpet, this worktop, this door — then for the purposes of that dispute it is decorative.

Which is why a report that says “kitchen: good condition throughout” is close to worthless. The claim will be about one thing, and the record has to be about things.

The five that decide it

1. Itemised condition, not room summaries. Each asset, its own line, its own grade, its own note. An adjudicator apportioning a claim needs to find the item. If they cannot, the claim fails on that item however good the rest of the report is.

2. Photographs with dates. The schemes accept date-stamped photographs and video, and video works best when the person filming narrates what is being shown. An undated image proves the property looked like that at some point.

3. Proof the tenant got it. A signature is the strongest version and it is not the only one. The scheme’s own guidance is that where the tenant has not signed and returned the inventory, evidence such as an email or proof of postage showing it was provided to them does the work. What is fatal is neither: a report nobody can show was ever sent.

4. Fair wear and tear, taken seriously in advance. Adjudicators apply the legal test — the reasonable operation of natural forces — against the length of the tenancy and the number of people living there. A four-year tenancy with two children will produce marks on a wall that are nobody’s fault. Claims for redecoration after five years or more are rarely awarded. Knowing that before you claim is cheaper than learning it afterwards.

5. The cost, after betterment. The principle is that the landlord should not end up better off, financially or materially, than at the start of the tenancy. Replacing a two-year-old carpet with a new one is not a loss of the full price of a carpet; it is the loss of the remaining life of that carpet. A claim that ignores this reads as an attempt to have the property improved at the tenant’s expense, and it colours how the rest of the claim is read.

What to send when a dispute is raised

Send the check-in and the check-out for the same items, side by side, with their photographs. Send the proof the tenant received the check-in. Send the invoice or quotation for the remedy, and show your own working on apportionment — the age of the item, its expected life, and the share you are claiming. Send any correspondence where the issue was raised during the tenancy.

What not to send: everything. A hundred-page bundle with the relevant photograph somewhere inside it is an invitation to miss it.

The part that is easy to get right and often is not

Timing. The deposit has to be protected and the prescribed information served within 30 days of receipt, and that clock has nothing to do with the quality of your inventory. A perfect evidence pack sits behind a protection failure, because the tenant’s claim for non-protection is decided before anyone looks at the carpet.

None of this is legal advice, and adjudicators decide on the evidence in front of them. But the shape of what wins is not a secret, and it is mostly a documentation problem rather than a legal one.

Sources: The Deposit Protection Service, common dispute questions.