As a landlady, and I have used a letting agency to find me

Thank you. Signing the contract on your behalf is no issue providing they do so with your authority. From what you say they did contact you prior to granting the tenancy and you agreed for them to do so if I understand what you say above correctly so this would be satisfactory to discharge their obligations to you as their principal. an agent owes its principal (you) in law a duty of care and a duty of obedience which essentially means in non legal jargon, tthat they should act with appropriate skill and care in your best interests and should not act in significant matters without your express authority - e.g. binding binding you to legal liabilities. without consent. Based on what you say they appear to have satisified the latter in asking your permission but there is at best a question mark over whether they acted with sufficient duty of care. If the agent either expressly or by implication recommended the tenant to you by seeking your permission to sign the contract on your behalf, and failed to carry out reference checks and appropriate identity due diligence as required by the retainer, it follows that they are in breach of their duty of care to you and therefore have acted negligently. Accordingly, you can consider claiming damages from them for both breach of contract in respect of their failure to obtain references in line with the terms and also in "tort" for negligence. accordingly, based on what you say, I consider that you have a claim for the lost rent on the basis that has referencing checks being carried out revealing that the tenant was either unable to afford the rent or had a poor credit history, you would not have accepted the tenant and it is therefore reasonable to conclude you would not have suffered the loss. In addition, you would have a claim for at least some of their fee charged to you on the basis of breach of contract as they have failed to perform all of the services they undertook to provide in their contract. As to whether you can claim for the remainder of the tenancy agreement, in law you have a duty to mitigate your loss. What this means is you cannot claim more than your actual reasonable loss and in particular cannot make a "profit" from the agents negligence. you would be able to claim up to the point you can reclaim possession of the property as well as a reasonable period to allow you to remarket the property to another tenant. You would not be able to claim for rent beyond that point because a court would consider that it is reasonable for you to have relet the property by that point. In terms of how you may decide to proceed, if the tenant has simply disappeared, you need to be careful with simply taking back possession of the property if you have no evidence that the tenant has intended to give up his tenancy - e.g. returned the keys or confirmed he does not intend to return. It is very dangerous for a landlord to assume a tenant has given up his tenancy by his vacating the property alone. if he has return the keys, there is little difficulty with this but if you do not have any specific evidence of his intention to surrender his tenancy, he will need to consider applying for a possession order through the courts before you retake possession all you are at risk of the tenant returning and claiming that you have unlawfully evicted him. This may sound fantastic but it regularly happens. in fact, some tenants deliberately vacate only to later return in order to sue the landlord for compensation. Courts can award high hundreds or low thousands for unlawful evictions. otherwise, in terms of how you may decide to proceed, you could of course simply issue proceedings in the County Court for recovery against the agent however you may decide in the first instance to refer your complaint to the Ombudsman service which the letting agent is legally obliged to be a member of. If the agent has not joined the property ombudsman service (there are three) this is a criminal offence and they will be liable to prosecution. You can refer your complaint to the property ombudsman which has the power to make an independent decision which will be binding upon the agent, though not on you. if you are not satisfied with the ombudsman's decision, you have the right to issue proceedings. therefore, the ombudsman service can be a no risk free way to initially proceed if you prefer this to court initiall. I hope the above is of assistance? If you have no further questions for now I should be very grateful if you would kindly take a moment to click to rate my service to you today or just reply back to let me know if the above is helpful. Your feedback is important to me. If there is anything else I can help with please reply back to me I'd be very grateful

I hope the above is helpful? Can I help you with anything else or has the above answered your questions satisfactorily? If you could drop me a quick message to let me know I'd be very grateful.

I'm really sorry it has not come through. Could I trouble you to repost it? I hope that is not cause too much inconvenience

I'm really sorry it has not come through. Could I trouble you to repost it? I hope that is not cause too much inconvenience

Thanks I have received the above this time. Apologies for any error. I would be delighted to continue to assist you with this follow up question. I should be very grateful if you would kindly click to rate my service to you to date in respect of my answer to your original question. I will be very please to deal with your follow up queries without further charge.

Would you like to continue. I hope the above is helpful? I should be most grateful if you would very kindly click to rate my service to you so far. I would be very please to deal with your above follow up questions and anything further you may need to ask on the above.

I look forward to hearing from you.