Nicholas Brown – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nicholas Brown on 2015-09-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Deposit Protection Service; and what plans he has to strengthen protections for tenants’ damage deposits.

Brandon Lewis

The Department has a governance role in ensuring that all Tenancy Deposit Protection schemes perform to high standards.

The Deposit Protection Service is required to submit monthly key performance indicators and provide annual updates of their management and financial plans to the Department, in accordance with the Service Concession Agreement we have with them.In addition, the Department holds quarterly monitoring meetings with the scheme operators at which any performance issues can be discussed. Since the schemes began in 2007, the Deposit Protection Service’s performance against the benchmarks set by our key performance indicators has been consistently high.

Safeguards are already in place to ensure that tenants’ deposits are protected. All landlords and agents are required to protect a deposit and provide the tenant with certain prescribed information within 30 days of taking the deposit. At the end of the tenancy, the deposit should be returned to the tenant if they have honoured the terms of the tenancy agreement. If the landlord and tenant do not agree how the deposit should be apportioned, they can use the free Alternative Dispute Resolution service offered by the schemes.