Thousands of deposits transferred to DPS

An extra 10,000 deposits were transferred from the TDS to the DPS totalling £8m, it has emerged.

The transfer followed the hike in subscriptions for the TDS earlier this year, according to Kevin Firth, who runs the DPS – the only scheme which physically protects tenants’ deposits.

“A lot more agents are using us, and 40 agents are now using our bulk upload facility,” said Firth, “but we also saw a big increase in landlords whose agents had been using TDS.

“The price rise was being passed on to them, and while they are still using the agent, they decided to take responsibility for the deposit protection themselves.”

He said he believed the lettings industry is becoming increasingly compliant with tenancy deposit protection law.

“Every day, we take on anywhere between 200 and 250 new landlords, and 20 new agents. I would guess that compliance is rising all the time, and the people out there who aren’t complying now are never going to comply – probably because their tenants are vulnerable and aren’t going to report them.”

He said the DPS has a dispute rate of 1.7% of all deposits protected and that this has guaranteed a sound business, since it had initially thought that disputes would run at 3%.

When Alternative Dispute Resolution is needed, disputes go to a team of three in-house adjudicators and a team of external ones.

He said approximately 60% of disputes are dealt with internally, and 40% externally.

“I don’t agree that disputes are better dealt with either in-house or externally,” said Firth. “What matters is that all our adjudicators are totally professional.”