letting agent wanting more after references submitted
me and my mum (main tenant) are both adults (obviously) and have been trying to get a private rental for almost four years. this is the first time we’ve made it past a viewing probably thanks to the new Renters Rights, so we’re very new to this.
letting agent asked us to submit everything through a Rightmove referencing application after paying the holding deposit, which we’ve done. part of the affordability check meant consenting to Open Banking, which we were happy to do so. we both make 30x the rent a year at least, and monthly combined were more than covered for rent and bills anyway.
except now the letting agent has messaged my mum privately on whatsapp (every other correspondence has been through email with other members of the letting agency cc’d in) and asked for 6 months worth of uncensored bank statements from both of us.
we said we’d already covered this by doing the Open Banking thing on the Rightmove affordability check and wanted to wait for that to go through, but the letting agent is insisting that “because Rightmove is a third party and they can’t see the Open Banking details”, they are legally required to ask for our bank statements to proceed with the tenancy agreement.
we obviously don’t want to do this because it’s private and sensitive information, especially because we’ve already given up everything to the Rightmove referencing application. but we also don’t want to argue with the letting agent and ruin our chances.
can they do this? can we just wait for the Rightmove thing to be processed? is the letting agent pushing this because they want to secure the tenancy quicker? any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.