❝ A Bristol lettings agency protected a five-student house's £3,750 deposit on day 41, because its deposit checklist started on move-in day and the law's 30 days start when the money arrives. The setting is a four-person lettings team managing 380 tenancies, with most of the year's deposits arriving in July and August. The design models what a year of this looks like: 9 deposits protected late, 3 housemate-swap deposits never protected, and 17 returned more than 10 days after the amount was agreed. The design below starts a deposit clock from the bank receipt, reminds the property manager on day 10, 20 and 25, closes each record only on the scheme's confirmation and on a signed copy of the prescribed information or proof it was served, and runs a second clock for the return. It costs about £37 a month to run.
The deposit arrived on 18 August. It was protected on 27 September, which is day 41. The following summer, a letter asked for three times the deposit.
Five students took a house in Bishopston for the academic year starting 1 September 2025. Rent was £3,250 a month, £750 a week, and the deposit was five weeks of it: £3,750, paid in full to a Bristol lettings agency on 18 August. The agency's process for deposits is a good one. On move-in day the property manager, Priya, works through a checklist: keys, inventory, meter readings, deposit registered with the scheme, prescribed information emailed to every tenant. It is a thorough checklist and it starts on move-in day.
The first fortnight of September is when the agency moves in most of its student houses. Priya registered the Bishopston deposit on 27 September and emailed the prescribed information two days later. The tenants stayed the year, moved out at the end of June, and the agency proposed £640 in deductions for cleaning and a stained carpet on 24 July. One of the tenants, Ellie, took the proposal to her university's advice service. The adviser asked for one document, the scheme's certificate, and compared its date with the date on Ellie's bank statement.
The letter before claim arrived in August. The landlord's name was on it. The agency settled at twice the deposit, £7,500, returned the £3,750 in full, and paid both, because the delay was its own.
The agency, Priya, Gareth, Tom and Ellie are a composite, built from the patterns we see in lettings agencies of this size, and the figures attached to them are design projections. The law, the deadlines and the schemes are real, and linked to their sources.
The business
A lettings and management agency in Bristol with 380 managed tenancies for about 210 landlords. A good share of the book is student houses in the streets around the universities, let in the spring for a September start, so most of the year's new deposits arrive in July and August and most of the move-ins happen in two weeks. The rest is family and professional lets that turn over through the year.
The lettings team is four people. Gareth owns the agency. Tom finds tenants and agrees the lets. Priya manages the tenancies, which includes every deposit from the day it arrives to the day it goes back. Rents and deposits land in the agency's client account; the property management system records each tenancy; the scheme's online portal holds the protections. In a typical year the agency takes about 158 new deposits and returns about 131.
What is actually going wrong
A careful person registered the deposit from a careful checklist, and the checklist was keyed to the wrong date.
The law counts from the money. Under section 213 of the Housing Act 2004, a landlord who receives a tenancy deposit must comply with the initial requirements of a government-authorised scheme, and give the tenant the prescribed information, within 30 days beginning with the date the deposit is received. The move-in date does not appear anywhere in that sentence. For a student house let in the spring, the money can arrive weeks before the keys go out, and every one of those weeks comes off the 30 days.
Three schemes, one deadline. In England there are three government-backed schemes: the Deposit Protection Service, MyDeposits and the Tenancy Deposit Scheme. Each offers a custodial version, where the scheme holds the money, and an insured version, where the agent holds it and the scheme insures it. Whichever the agency uses, the deadline is the same.
The prescribed information has its own list. What the tenant must be given is set out in the Housing (Tenancy Deposits) (Prescribed Information) Order 2007: the scheme's contact details, the amount, the property, how the deposit can be returned, what happens in a dispute, and more. It must also go to anyone who paid the deposit on the tenant's behalf, which, in a student house, is often a parent. The hard part is knowing that every person received it before day 30.
The penalty is set by the size of the deposit. If the deposit is protected late, or the information is not given in time, the tenant can apply to the county court, and under section 214 the court must order the landlord to pay the tenant a sum of not less than the amount of the deposit and not more than three times it. A day late and a year late start from the same minimum. The tenant can bring the claim after the tenancy has ended, which is exactly when an adviser is most likely to be looking at the paperwork.
The rules changed in May and the deadline did not. On 1 May 2026 the Renters' Rights Act 2025 turned assured shorthold tenancies in England into assured periodic tenancies and ended section 21 notices. The deposit rules carried across to the new tenancies: the same 30 days, the same prescribed information and the same one to three times. Before May, an unprotected deposit stopped a landlord serving a section 21 notice under section 215. Section 21 has gone, and the substituted section 215 now restricts possession orders instead: since May, a court cannot grant possession under section 8, except on the anti-social behaviour grounds, until the deposit is protected and the prescribed information has been given. The NRLA's summary sets out the detail.
The other end has a clock too. Once landlord and tenant have agreed how much comes back, the deposit must be returned within 10 days. If they cannot agree, the money stays protected and the scheme offers a free dispute service. In the Bishopston house the proposal went out 24 days after the tenants left, and that delay is what sent Ellie to an adviser. The late protection was in the file all along.
What it costs
This design models what a check of the agency's last 12 months of deposits against the bank receipts would find, with the September pattern repeated:
9 deposits protected after day 30, all of them received in July or August for a September start.
3 deposits from housemate swaps in shared houses, where the incoming tenant's money arrived and was never protected at all.
12 sets of prescribed information sent with no record that the tenant, or the parent who paid, received them.
17 deposits returned more than 10 days after the amount was agreed.
The nine late and three unprotected deposits average £2,050. Each one, if the tenant applies, carries a court order of between one and three times its deposit: on the average deposit, £2,050 to £6,150 per claim, before anyone's legal costs. Where in that range a claim lands is the court's decision. It is what an adviser can put to the agency with one certificate and one bank statement.
The cost the agency pays every month is Priya's time. Registering deposits, chasing signed prescribed information, writing deduction proposals and arguing about carpets takes about 28 hours a month in this model, more in September and July. At £20 an hour with on-costs (our assumption), that is about £560 a month.
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