Police continue probe after letting agent closes

An agent which has apparently shut up shop owing landlords and tenants money is the subject of ongoing investigations.

The scale of debt which could be owed by Gardner Property Services in Brentwood, Essex, could easily run into six figures.

Steve Saunders, a senior consultant with local property firm Sanders Witherspoon, a legal firm with an agency arm, said that earlier estimates of £10,000 were well wide of the mark.

Saunders’ father died last year having been a landlord with two properties managed by Gardner Property Services.

Mr Saunders said that the firm had been in the habit of paying rent three months late, and that his elderly father had at one stage been owed a total of £2,400 – although this was paid when the son went into the office to demand payment.

His own firm and others in the Brentwood area are advising tenants whose tenancies are now ending to contact Essex police’s fraud office if they are not receiving their deposits back. However, there is no suggestion that the firm has not protected deposits properly and this morning the Deposit Protection Scheme confirmed that Gardner Property Services had used it over the last year.

Mr Saunders said his chief concern was to discover that Gardner’s landlords were often either aged – as his father had been – or living abroad.

He said: “For me, it is not so much about the money, although of course that is important, but about the fact that someone really needs to stand up for these people.”

He, and others, have given statements to Essex police about Gardner Property Services, owned by David Norris.