Could old rent deposit records cause problems?

Are you able to determine when the deposits were returned for example by looking at bank statements? Lets say property A had the deposit returned in full in 2019. You can log into Mydeposits and mark the deposit returned in full on the date as per bank statement. If anyone subsequently says they didn’t receive the deposit, you have evidence wit the bank statement.

Similarly if say £100 of a £500 deposit was withheld for a broken sink you will hopefully have bank statement showing the £400 returned and £100 invoice for a sink repair. You then pick the option, ‘returned some’.

Actually, looking at the mydeposits website they’ve changed their format. It might be slightly different. Nonetheless if you can collect proof of what deposits you have returned, attempt to end the deposit protection and if you get stuck give them a ring and explain your situation.

Pretty much as Django says. Previously we were just supposed to ask for tenants bank details, refund money (or not), click on unprotect and choose between refunded all, refunded some and withheld all. Then it showed as unprotected. There was something about it being protected for 90 days after the tenancy ended. There was no provision for notifying them the tenant hadn’t provided bank details but was due a partial refund. So those deposits showed as protected even though the tenancy ended years ago. One of mine was in that situation for 8 years as there was no obvious way of unprotecting it.

Mydeposits changed their system in July and now has a 90 day wait before showing the deposit as unprotected unless the tenant tells them they have received the refund. Of the last 15 deposits I have refunded since August only 2 have responded to the email mydeposits sent them. This is probably because mydeposits ask them for their bank details. Why would mydeposits need bank details if we have already refunded the deposit? It may be more successful if mydeposits asked if the deposit had been refunded YES or NO. If NO prompt them to supply bank details.

I actually phoned mydeposits as I couldn’t access details of one of the custodial deposits they hold. They said they had changed the insured system to annual subscription partly because of the RRA and partly because there were lots of deposits that hadn’t been unprotected. It turns out they had no way of knowing if a deposit was still live or if we had forgotten to unprotect it. Even though we paid a fee to protect the deposit for its lifetime we are now going to be charged an annual fee for those same deposits because mydeposits have no idea how many of them are still live. Absolute rip off. The woman I spoke to sounded most surprised that any tenancy would last longer than 5 years. Some of mine are well over 10 years and of course the deposits should still be protected.

It seems that now we are supposed to initiate the unprotection, mydeposits emails the tenant asking for bank details, the tenant may or may not respond, we refund the money if they respond and after 90 days the deposit is unprotected. If they don’t supply bank details and we therefore don’t refund the deposit, as far as mydeposits is concerned the tenant would then need to take us to court. I preferred the old way of doing things because I could nag tenants until they provided bank details. It was done in a timely fashion and not sat in the back of my brain niggling.

It would be interesting to know how many custodial deposits mydeposits haven’t refunded due to the lack of engagement from tenants. How much of the criticism of landlords for not refunding deposits is really due to mydeposits having an over reliance on tenants being proactive?

Hi Sam,

Django and Jo have the mydeposits mechanics covered, so this is the legal half, which splits into two bits of relief and one risk that isn’t the one you’ve named.

On compensation claims from the old tenancies: the grounds for a tenant’s claim are in section 214(1)(a) of the Housing Act 2004, and they are a failure to comply with section 213(3) or 213(6), meaning the deposit not protected in time or the prescribed information not served. A stale allocation on the scheme’s record is not one of those grounds. If those deposits were genuinely protected and the paperwork served at the time, the breach never happened, and tidying the record years later cannot create one. Section 214(1A) does let a former tenant apply after a tenancy has ended, so “it finished years ago” is not the shield people assume. The six year point is, though: a section 214 award is a sum recoverable by statute, so section 9(1) of the Limitation Act 1980 allows six years from when the cause of action accrued, and on your relative’s dates that has run.

On quasi creating new tenancies, that fear was real before 2015 and it got fixed. Section 215B of the Housing Act 2004, inserted by section 32 of the Deregulation Act 2015, provides that where a deposit was properly protected and the prescribed information served on the original tenancy, and a replacement tenancy then arises with the same landlord, the same tenant, the same or substantially the same property and the same scheme, the section 213(3), (5) and (6) duties are treated as already complied with. No fresh 30 day clock, no fresh prescribed information. An allocation standing against a different property and a different tenant cannot roll into anything at all. Allocations are the scheme’s accounting, not a tenancy.

The exposure he should actually care about is the other limb. Section 214(1)(b) lets a tenant apply where they have been told a particular scheme applies to their deposit but cannot get confirmation from the administrator that it is held in accordance with that scheme. That needs no breach by the landlord. It only needs the record to be unclear when the new tenant goes looking. So the cleanup Django describes is not housekeeping, it is closing the one live risk here, and it protects the new tenancy rather than the old ones.

Practically: get the allocation count corrected before the new deposit goes on, and ask mydeposits to confirm in writing which allocations are closed and when. As the old tenancies were in joint names, ask them to update the account holder details in the same call. His wife’s death does not create a fresh section 213 duty, but a new tenant querying a name that does not match the tenancy agreement is exactly how the 214(1)(b) problem starts.

OJ
Am I a Legal Landlord