Fair wear and tear vs damage: how deposit adjudicators decide

Most deposit disputes are not about whether something changed. They are about whether the change is wear and tear, which the landlord absorbs, or damage, which the tenant can be asked to pay for. The line between the two is not written in a statute, but the deposit schemes and the courts apply it consistently, and an inventory is what lets you show which side of it a change falls on.

What fair wear and tear means

The phrase comes from an old legal definition: the reasonable use of the premises by the tenant and the ordinary operation of natural forces. In plain terms, the deterioration you would expect from someone living normally in the property for the time they were there. A carpet in a hallway wears. Paint behind a sofa scuffs. A kitchen worktop picks up fine marks. None of that is chargeable.

Length of tenancy and number of occupants both matter. Two years with a family of four produces more wear than six months with one person, and an adjudicator will allow for it.

What damage means

Damage is deterioration that would not have happened through ordinary use: a burn on a worktop, a hole in a door, picture-hook holes not made good, a stain that cleaning cannot lift, a broken hinge. Neglect counts too: a mould patch caused by never opening a window can be damage, but only if the inventory and the mid-term visits show the ventilation was working and the problem is behavioural, which is often not the case.

Betterment: why you never get new for old

Even where damage is proven, the landlord cannot end up better off than before the tenancy. A five-year-old carpet with a burn is not replaced with a new carpet at the tenant's expense. The schemes apportion the cost: they take the item's expected lifespan, deduct the years already used, and award the remaining proportion. The same logic applies to decoration, appliances and furniture.

• A carpet is often treated as lasting around ten years in a rental; a five-year-old carpet destroyed by a tenant might attract half its replacement cost, not all of it.
• Decoration is typically expected to last a few years between tenancies; a redecoration claim on paint that was already three years old at check-in will be heavily reduced.
• The inventory's condition grade and description at check-in are what fix the starting age and state. Without them, the adjudicator assumes the item was already worn.

How the adjudicator reads the evidence

The adjudicator has the check-in inventory, the check-out report, the photographs, the tenancy agreement and whatever each side writes. They do not visit. They look for a check-in entry, a check-out entry, and a change between the two that is described and photographed. A check-out that says 'walls: poor' against a check-in that says 'walls: good' with no description of what changed will usually be found insufficient.

This is why a check-out is written against the original inventory rather than from scratch. The same row, the same wording, the same photograph angle, with the change appended. Only the rows that changed matter, and they need to say what changed and whether it is beyond ordinary use.

What the record does not do

An inventory and check-out record what was seen. They do not put a price on it and they do not say who pays. That is for the landlord, agent and tenant to agree, or the scheme to decide. A clerk who writes 'tenant to pay £200' is giving an opinion the adjudicator will discount. We describe; we do not judge. The sample report shows what that looks like in practice.