To: The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government
Give renters’ deposits back quicker!
Force landlords to give us our money back quickly, fine them if they make fake damage claims, and stop them holding our cash hostage in dodgy insurance-based schemes.
Why is this important?
Even though renters’ tenancy deposits must be legally protected by a government-approved scheme, too many of us aren’t getting all the money that is rightfully ours when we move.
Generation Rent estimates 296,000 renter households could be losing out on hundreds of pounds every year.
Parts of the system work well. On average, those of us who challenge landlords’ claims on our deposits through protection schemes get 79% of our deposit back.
But few of us get this far. Of renters whose landlords make unfair claims on their deposit at the end of the tenancy, just 1 in 5 raise a dispute with the deposit scheme.
Some of us don’t know that it’s ultimately up to the tenant to claim the money, which can mean we run out of time to get it back.
Others worry that the dispute process will be unfair or take too long - at a time when we need the money back quickly.
And some landlords actively pressure renters to settle for less than they deserve, by exaggerating their claims, refusing to deal with the deposit scheme or simply not protecting the deposit in the first place.
While renters can take legal action if our deposit is not protected and get compensation, this can be a slow process with large upfront costs. And even if a claim for imaginary damage is ultimately rejected by the deposit scheme, there is no cost to the landlord for trying to get away with this.
The way the system works makes this bad behaviour easier. Some schemes let the landlord hold on to the money themselves, while paying to insure it, which means dodgy ones can hold the entire deposit hostage while negotiations or adjudication takes place.
Making it the landlord’s responsibility to make a claim soon after the tenancy ends and return unclaimed cash to the tenant as soon as possible, will make moving home a lot less stressful.
Scrapping the insurance-backed schemes completely, and holding all renters’ deposits in the remaining custodial schemes, would make it easier to update the rules and ultimately return the money to its rightful owner.
And imposing fines on landlords who repeatedly get exaggerated claims rejected by the deposit schemes would shut down that behaviour and get money back into renters’ pockets quicker.
