TDS annual review

TDS annual review

10:52 AM, 6th December 2018, About 5 years ago 4

Text Size

In the last financial year (April 2017-March 2018), the UK’s leading tenancy deposit protection provider, The Dispute Service increased the number of deposits it protects by 6.8% across the UK.

The growth was announced in its Annual Review, published today (6th December 2018): Click here to download

The Dispute Service subsidiary, TDS Northern Ireland, experienced the greatest growth, with the scheme expanding 13.85%. Sister company, SafeDeposits Scotland followed suit, generating an 8% rise in the number of tenancy deposits protected. In England and Wales, The Dispute Service trades as Tenancy Deposit Scheme (TDS), which grew 6.52% over the year.

What claims feature in disputes? Whenever we get a dispute to adjudicate it is usually the case that the dispute will include a number of claims. The chart below shows what claims feature in disputes across our four schemes.

Steve Harriott, Group CEO of The Dispute Service said: “The growth we have experienced is due to both the increasing size of the private rented sector and the quality of the service we provide to our customers..

“Over the last year, we’ve invested significantly in our people, products and customer service. We’re consistently meeting government targets for call and email answering times across the UK, and were awarded the Customer Service Excellence accreditation earlier this year.

“There’s a lot of interest in the private rented sector and particularly in tenancy deposit protection. The sector continues to grow but there is very little in the way of published data on tenancy deposit protection.

“Our Annual Review tries to bring transparency to the sector, updating our customers, suppliers, partners and the general public on what we’ve been working on throughout the year. We’re keen to share key data such as the number of deposits protected and the number of tenancies which end in dispute and we feel that our yearly publications do just that.”


Share This Article


Comments

RichDad

10:40 AM, 7th December 2018, About 5 years ago

Have any 118 members tried the Zero Deposit approach? If it is roughly the same cost as an insurance-based deposit scheme, then it would eliminate some of the risks (if the usual paper trail is not 101% correct)?

RichDad

11:39 AM, 7th December 2018, About 5 years ago

Errrmmm … looks like Zero Deposits is at a very early stage yet, and landlords cannot access it directly. Tenants pay the equivalent of one week's rent to them (instead of up to six weeks' deposit) so it eases their cashflow at the start of a tenancy. That covers landlord for the equivalent of six week's loss/damage, and does not limit the landlord from claiming higher amounts from the tenant. Tenant also pays £26 pa to stay in the scheme. Seems to be "free" to landlords, but it seems they are trying to force it to operate through larger chains of letting agents (as their approach to growing the user base quickly). I have no problem with that, but I'm not so keen to be a guinea pig. I will watch with great interest.

Michael Barnes

1:16 AM, 9th December 2018, About 5 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Richard Peeters at 07/12/2018 - 11:39
Anything that requires tenant to keep making payments is a no-no for me.

RichDad

17:39 PM, 15th December 2018, About 5 years ago

Is the deposit-free rental model a good idea?
https://www.estateagenttoday.co.uk/features/2018/12/is-the-deposit-free-rental-model-a-good-idea

One good thing that would come from this should be that the insurers will soon see which tenants tend to cause them the greatest payouts, and so they will have to raise premiums on those tenants, or possibly declining to insure them. That in itself would be a great filter for landlords when signing up a new tenant.

Is it my imagination, or can you also see Shelter immediately claiming that the insurers are ganging up with landlords to discriminate against innocent tenants?

Leave Comments

In order to post comments you will need to Sign In or Sign Up for a FREE Membership

or

Don't have an account? Sign Up

Landlord Tax Planning Book Now