Tenants Deposit
- Landlords / letting agents will request a deposit from tenants to cover any unforeseen costs that may occur. The deposit will be used to
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Recover cost or claim compensation for any damage that you as a tenant is responsible for. This will be alighted in the tenancy agreement. It is vital for you the tenant to ask for this to be clarified by your
landlord, which can also be your letting agent
- To help tenant, In April 2014 the government introduced the (TDS) to protect their deposit as some landlords were failing to return tenant’s deposit at the end of their lease
- Custodial Scheme: You pay the deposit to the landlord or letting agent which in turn pay the deposit in a scheme
- Insurance Scheme: You pay the deposit to your landlord or letting agent which in turn retains the deposit and pays a premium to the insurer
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Your landlord will ask you to pay a certain amount of money toward the deposit. The landlord cannot just tell you whatever he/she want you to pay. The deposit has to be related to the monthly rental amount. Exemple
if your rent is £500 then the deposit should normally be £500
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In addition, the landlords will aske you to pay 1 month in advance or 6 weeks in advance, this in addition to the deposit. It is current, and landlords just differs in the number of weeks for the weeks in advance.
This mean that the landlord cannot just for any amount when they feel like it. It has to be justified
- The landlord must protect the deposit of the tenant from the time and day he/she receive it within 30 days and must serve a prescribe information at the same time
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The deposit must be protected within 30 days of receiving the deposit (this may not necessarily be the same date as when the tenancy starts), the tenant must also be served prescribed information within 30 days,
which includes
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Note that taking a deposit from you the tenant is not a lawful requirement. The landlord can choose not to take a deposit from you. But if he/she does then the landlord is required by law to protect your deposit, and
it became an obligation to do so
- It is when the tenancy Is a non-assured shorthand tenancy, it’s absolves the landlord from securing the tenancy deposit into a (TDS). But the landlord must do the following
Serve the tenant with a notice that
- the tenancy deposit will not be protected
- The tenancy agreement must state that the tenancy is a non-assured short hold tenancy
