Hi there.
We have been renting from a private landlord and gave our 1 month notice to end the tenancy. Our relationship has been so far great with the landlords. They were selling the house and we accommodated viewings and it successfully sold. The house is very old and we have had to ‘put up’ with a lot of disrepair in the property of which the landlords were aware of. They have been wanting to sell for a few years and have not really invested into the house at all and it has aged quite badly. We met on the final day to hand in keys and take final meter readings etc. We had not been able to move out a very large appliance and asked the landlord if it was okay to leave it in place for the time being until we had arranged to sell it, to which they agreed as the buying process had only just begun and the property was likely to be empty for weeks, possibly months to come as it was quite a big sale, of more than one property and land also. The house was completely cleared and cleaned by ourselves, there were some tears on small patches of wallpaper in 2 rooms which we sadly had not time to repair, we expected it to just come off our deposit to be honest. The landlord was actually happy to leave us with one key (we gave the other main key back to them as we were not living there anymore, so happy to do so) to have access to solely paint over the patches of wallpaper quickly and which we have done since. It has been nearly 2 weeks since we vacated and entered the property for less than one hour to quickly paint and then leave. When inside the property to paint it was noted that the hot water was coming on and the heating was on (we had confirmed it was all turned off on our final day with the landlords being there as well and we had not used the heating since 2023, so had been off for all that time). We notified the landlord of this, to see if they had turned it on and if not if they wanted it turning off and now they are saying we would be responsible for the cost of the utilities AFTER vacating and are actually suggesting we had turned everything back on after leaving?! We have not been responsible for Council Tax since vacating as we no longer actually live there. We were left with a key to just paint, in place of a contractor/decorator which they would have hired instead. But to now be told we would be responsible for the heating bill is a bit absurd to us now. The landlords do not live close, and it seems like they have not been back to the house since meeting us to check the house and are now trying to leave us with an extra bill to pickup because of their lack of due diligence. Who is actually responsible here?