A WHILST your daughter and her friends may have entered into a contract to rent the property for a fixed term (presumably until the end of the academic year) that property must be fit for habitation.

If you are concerned about the safety of the property, I would recommend that your daughter contact her local Environmental Health Department of the Council and report the problems.

Your daughter has the right to ask the Environmental Health Department to inspect the property and the council has the power to require landlords to conduct repairs.

In emergencies, the council can conduct their own repairs.

If remedial works are ordered and can be carried out quickly and easily without undue disruption for your daughter and her friends, the landlord is likely to have a reasonable argument that the property is fit for habitation and that the tenants are bound into a contract with him.

If the council states that the property is unfit for habitation and if it requires major disruptive works to remedy, your daughter and her friends may well have a good argument that their landlord has failed to provide an adequate property and that they are free to seek alternative accommodation.

Whilst your daughter and her friends may be able to negotiate a rent reduction if remedial works are required and may be entitled to bring a claim for reimbursement of rent if they have to move out, they should continue to pay full rent in the meantime.

Refusing to pay rent gives the landlord the opportunity to seek possession of the property, regardless of the dispute about its condition.

In respect of the deposit, all tenancies where a deposit has been taken since October 2007 carry an obligation on the landlord to protect that deposit.

The most common method of protecting the deposit is to pay it into the Deposit Protection Service. The DPS keeps the deposit and if there is a dispute at the end of the tenancy, it seeks to resolve the dispute independently.

Your daughter's landlord should have provided her with information as to how her deposit will be protected.

If the deposit is not protected, your daughter is able to make an application to court for an order that it be protected and is also entitled to three times the amount of the deposit by way of compensation.

In addition, although your letter does not say so, if your daughter shares a property with four or more other people, and the property is spread over three or more floors, the landlord is obliged to obtain a license from the council.

If this applies, you should again contact the local council to check whether a license has been obtained.

If you are still worried about the position after the council has conducted an inspection, I recommend that your daughter goes to see a solicitor or makes an appointment with the Citizens Advice Bureau.

Alternatively, your daughter may be able to obtain assistance from her student union.

Q I HAVE received a 'Statutory Demand'. I think it relates to a dispute that I am involved in but I am not sure. What should I do?

A IT is a very important document and should not be ignored.

I assume it relates to a company or a person who believes that you owe them money. If you were to ignore the document for more than 21 days from the date you received it then you are at risk that the person claiming money from you will apply to the court for you to be made bankrupt.

If you have ignored it then court would assume that the money is properly owed and that a bankruptcy order is appropriate.

This procedure can only be used where there is no 'dispute' that you owe the money. If there is a genuine dispute (not just trying to delay payment) then you must immediately write to the company or person issuing the statutory demand pointing out the dispute and insisting that it is withdrawn.

If you do not hear anything or they refuse to do so then you must make an immediate application to the court to prevent the other side, who are demanding money from you, from issuing a bankruptcy petition.