Tenancy Deposit Scheme

A tenant’s deposit (bond) is held to cover damage, breakages, and any other liabilities under the terms of the tenancy agreement, it is treated as the tenant’s money and landlords have no automatic right to keep any of it at the end of the tenancy.

Landlords have to register their tenant’s deposit with one of the approved deposit protection schemes within 30 days under current legislation. The penalties for not doing so include losing the right to evict tenants under a Section 21 Notice and a fine of three times the deposit taken, plus the original deposit, if a tenant takes you to the small claims court for non protection.

The deposit cannot be used by the tenant to cover rent arrears. The tenants must agree to any deductions at the end of their tenancy, if they don’t and you cannot come to an agreement, all schemes have a free ADR service in order to get resolution between you for the disputed amount. The undisputed amount should be returned asap.

Types of Deposit Schemes

There are two types of scheme: Insurance Backed and Custodial

Please note if you are an overseas landlord, you are obliged to use a custodial scheme.

Custodial

A custodial scheme means the tenant’s money is paid into a Government approved scheme where they hold it as ‘custodians’.

Insurance backed

Insurance Backed means that a landlord can keep the money in their bank account, but the deposit must be registered with a Government approved insured scheme.

What is the process?

Arranging A Deposit Protection

The person who receives the deposit is responsible for registration. If you have found your own tenants and are managing the property yourself, you must register with a scheme and register the deposits.

If Northwood Forest HIll are managing your property

Northwood Forest HIll register all deposits for our managed landlords in a custodial scheme with the Deposit Protection Service (DPS) free of charge under our management terms. This means we pay the deposit directly into the scheme so it is safely locked away, giving both you and your tenants peace of mind that it cannot be touched until the end of the tenancy. We do not hold deposits in our own bank account unless they fall outside of the requirements for deposit protection (i.e. company or premium lets). We will then deal with the deposit returns and deductions at the end of the tenancy on your behalf, working with both you and your tenants. Our DPS Agent ID is:1178518.

Managing your own property

If you have used our “Let Only” service or have found your own tenants and will be managing the property yourself, you are free to use either an Insurance Backed Scheme or a Custodial Scheme.

We recommend using a custodial scheme, this way your tenant knows the money is ‘locked away’ and being held by a third party, which will re-assure them. In both instances you should remember this is your tenant’s money and is only to be used for reasonable damages incurred during the tenancy above and beyond expected wear and tear for the life of the tenancy, and type of tenants. Ie if you grant a tenancy to a large family with small children that lasts over 3-4 years, you will be expected to have to do some re-painting, so it would be unfair to charge for this to be re-done unless there are drawings on the walls for example! In which case this one wall could be chargeable.

The following information on the two different types of schemes assumes we are not managing your property:

If Northwood Forest HIll have found you tenants, we will pay over and register your tenant’s deposit with the DPS under our ID initially. You will need to create a free landlord account with the DPS yourself and you’ll be given a Landlord ID. When you give us your landlord ID, we can then transfer the deposit to this ID within the scheme, meaning you have full control over the return process when it comes to the end of the tenancy.

Although the DPS custodial scheme is free to use, we do charge £35 to non managed landlords for the extra admin time as we have to register the deposit under our name, pay the money into the scheme and then transfer it out again to your ID.

Two other schemes; My Depositsand TDS do also offer custodial schemes, but we do not hold accounts with them and are therefore unable to transfer deposits directly to either of these schemes. If you wish to use either of these we will need to see evidence that the money has been paid into the scheme for the specific deposit, and that it is protected, before we can transfer the deposit to you.

This can take the form of the tenancy deposit certificate for My Deposits or the confirmation email containing the specifics for the TDS. It must contain the details of that specific property and tenancy as confirmation of money being paid into the scheme, confirmation of your landlord ID is not enough unfortunately. This also means you will need to have extra funds in advance to match deposit amount in order to be able to protect the deposit in advance of us transferring your tenant’s money to you directly.

We will not charge for a transfer directly to you, this is only applicable if we have to transfer it into a scheme directly.

You can hold your tenant’s deposit in your own bank account only if you register with, and protect the deposit in, an insurance backed deposit scheme. All four major schemes, My Deposits, TDS , DPS and Deposit Guard now offer this service. There is usually a fee from each scheme for joining and they will charge a fee per deposit protected.

If you wish to use any of these schemes we will need to see evidence that the specific deposit is protected before we can transfer the deposit to you. This can take the form of the tenancy deposit certificate or the confirmation email containing the specifics if the scheme does not produce a certificate. It must contain the details of that specific property and tenancy as confirmation of the deposit already being protected, confirmation of your landlord ID or scheme membership is not enough unfortunately.

We will not charge for a transfer directly to you.

Please note if you are an overseas landlord, you are obliged to use a custodial scheme.