Deposit protection is the one landlord obligation where the penalty is paid directly to the tenant, and where the mistake is almost always the same: the money was protected, but the paperwork that goes with it was not sent in time.
The Renters' Rights Act has also raised the stakes considerably, by tying deposit compliance to whether you can recover possession of your own property at all.
The 30-day rule, both halves of it
If you take a security deposit, you have 30 days from receiving it to do two separate things:
- Protect the deposit in one of the three government-approved schemes
- Serve the prescribed information on the tenant, and on anyone who paid the deposit on their behalf, such as a guarantor or a parent
Both, within the same 30 days. Landlords who fall foul of this have usually done the first and assumed it covered the second.
The three approved schemes
In England and Wales there are three, and each offers a custodial option, where the scheme holds the money, and an insured option, where you hold it and pay a fee:
- The Deposit Protection Service (DPS)
- MyDeposits
- The Tenancy Deposit Scheme (TDS)
Custodial is free and removes any argument about where the money is. Insured gives you the cash flow. For a landlord with one or two properties, custodial is usually the lower-effort choice.
What the prescribed information actually is
It is not a leaflet, and forwarding the scheme's certificate is not enough on its own. The prescribed information is a defined set of details, including:
- Which scheme is protecting the deposit, with its contact details
- The amount of the deposit and the address of the property
- Your name and contact details, and the tenant's
- The details of anyone else who paid the deposit
- How the deposit will be returned at the end of the tenancy, and what happens if there is a dispute
- Confirmation, signed by you, that the information is accurate
Each scheme provides a template. Use it, send it in a way you can evidence, and keep the proof. This is the same discipline as proving you served a certificate: holding the document is not the obligation, showing the tenant received it is.
What it costs to get wrong
If you fail to protect the deposit or fail to serve the prescribed information in time, the tenant can apply to the county court. The court can order you to repay or protect the deposit, and to pay the tenant between one and three times its value in compensation.
Two things make this sharper than most landlord penalties. It is claimable by the tenant rather than dependent on a local authority deciding to act, and the claim can be brought even after the tenancy has ended.
The change that matters most: possession
Under the Renters' Rights Act, deposit compliance is now a gateway to possession. A landlord cannot obtain a possession order under Section 8 unless the deposit was protected in an authorised scheme and the prescribed information was served before the notice was issued. The only carve-out is for grounds relating to anti-social behaviour.
Read that in practical terms. If a tenant stops paying rent and your deposit paperwork was never completed properly two years ago, the arrears ground is not available to you until it is fixed. A filing oversight at the start of a tenancy becomes the reason you cannot act at the end of one.
The limits, and the things that are not deposits
Deposits are capped: five weeks' rent where the annual rent is under £50,000, and six weeks' rent at or above that. A holding deposit is capped at one week's rent and is a separate thing with its own rules, but if you keep it and apply it to the tenancy deposit, it becomes part of the deposit and must be protected with it.
Note also that the protection duty attaches to assured shorthold tenancies. Lodgers taken in under a licence, and most company lets, sit outside it, which is a genuine distinction rather than a loophole worth reaching for.
Deadlines you can see
Deposit protection is unusual among landlord obligations in being a one-off with a hard 30-day deadline rather than a recurring renewal. That makes it easy to complete and easy to lose track of, because nothing ever reminds you it happened.
Recording the protection date and the date you served the prescribed information, per tenancy, is what turns it into something you can evidence years later when it matters. PropCert tracks a Deposit Protection Certificate alongside your safety certificates for that reason.
For everything else on the list, see the UK landlord compliance checklist, and for what happens when each deadline slips, the penalties guide.
Written by The PropCert team
PropCert builds certificate tracking for UK landlords. Every guide is checked against the primary source, gov.uk, HSE, or the legislation itself.
This guide is general information about landlord obligations in England, not legal advice. Where a decision turns on your specific circumstances, check the primary source or take advice.