Deposit Protection — DPS, TDS, mydeposits Compared

Every deposit taken on an assured shorthold or assured tenancy in England and Wales must be protected in one of three government-approved schemes within 30 days of receipt. Fail, and the tenant can claim up to three times the deposit and your Section 21/8 route is compromised.

The three schemes

Deposit Protection Service (DPS) — custodial version is free. The DPS holds the money and returns it on agreed instructions. There is also an insured version with a per-tenancy fee.

Tenancy Deposit Scheme (TDS) — offers both custodial and insured products. Popular with letting agents because of the dispute resolution service.

mydeposits — insured and custodial options. Owned by the Hamilton Fraser group.

All three offer free adjudication of disputes at the end of the tenancy. The custodial route is safest for landlords because the money is out of your bank account and out of any legal question about co-mingling.

The 30-day clock

The clock starts on the day the deposit is received in cleared funds, not the tenancy start date. Within 30 days you must:

1. Protect the deposit in one of the schemes.
2. Serve the prescribed information on the tenant and on any relevant person (a guarantor or the person who paid the deposit).

The prescribed information must include:

• The amount of the deposit.
• The address of the property.
• The name, address and contact details of the landlord, agent and scheme.
• The circumstances in which deductions may be made.
• The tenant's and landlord's contact details.
• Confirmation that the information is accurate, signed by the landlord.

Missing any of these fields is treated as if no prescribed information was served at all.

The penalty

The tenant can apply for a court order for one to three times the deposit, in addition to the return of the deposit itself. Judges rarely award below 1x for a technical breach and often award 2x for a careless one.

Deposit caps under the Tenant Fees Act

• Annual rent under £50,000 — deposit capped at five weeks of rent.
• Annual rent £50,000 or more — capped at six weeks.
• Holding deposits capped at one week and must be repaid or applied within 15 days.

Ending the tenancy

Agree deductions in writing, or refer to the scheme's dispute resolution service. Evidence — check-in inventory with photos and dates, check-out inventory in the same format, invoices — is what wins.

How EstateVera helps

EstateVera stores the scheme reference, prescribed information PDF and signed inventories on the tenancy record. The 30-day deadline auto-books into the compliance calendar the moment a deposit is logged.