Deposit Prescribed Information UK (30-Day Rule)

What Is Prescribed Information?

When you take a tenancy deposit, you must do two things within 30 days:

1. 1Protect the deposit in one of three government-approved schemes: DPS, TDS, or mydeposits
2. 2Provide Prescribed Information to the tenant about where the deposit is held

Prescribed Information is a specific set of details, listed in the Housing (Tenancy Deposits) (Prescribed Information) Order 2007. It isn't just a receipt or a note. It's a formal document, and everything on that list has to be in it.

What Must Prescribed Information Include?

The Prescribed Information document must include:

• The name and contact details of the tenancy deposit scheme protecting the deposit
• The amount of the deposit protected
• The address of the rented property
• The landlord's name and contact details (or the agent's, if applicable)
• The tenant's name and contact details
• The date the deposit was received
• How the deposit can be repaid at the end of the tenancy
• What to do if there is a dispute about the deposit
• The contact details of the scheme's dispute resolution service
• Details of any relevant persons (e.g. guarantors) who paid the deposit

Practical tip: All three approved schemes provide a Prescribed Information template. Use their official template rather than writing your own.

What Happens If You Don't Provide Prescribed Information?

The consequences are severe:

1. Court can order payment of 1 to 3× the deposit

The court has discretion to order you to pay the tenant between 1 and 3 times the deposit amount as a penalty. On a typical £1,200 deposit, that is £1,200 to £3,600.

2. The court can refuse a possession order

You can still serve a Section 8 notice, but the court cannot make a possession order on most grounds (all except Grounds 7A and 14) until you put it right: protect it and serve the Prescribed Information (late still counts), or return the deposit. Section 21, which deposit breaches also blocked, was abolished on 1 May 2026.

3. Claims don't wait for the end of the tenancy

A tenant can bring a claim during the tenancy, not just when it ends, and after it ends within the normal time limits for court claims. A deposit taken years ago can still come back to you.

The 30-Day Clock: What Triggers It?

The 30-day window starts from the day you receive the deposit, not the tenancy start date, not when the tenant moves in.

If a holding deposit is put towards the deposit, the safe course is to protect the whole deposit and give the prescribed information within 30 days of when you first received the holding deposit.

What if you miss the deadline?

Protect the deposit immediately and serve Prescribed Information as soon as possible. The tenant can still claim, but courts may award a lower penalty (1×) if you acted quickly and in good faith.

How to Serve Prescribed Information Correctly

• Who must receive it: All tenants named on the tenancy agreement, plus any relevant persons (e.g. parent guarantors who paid the deposit)
• How to serve: Post or email. Keep proof of service (read receipt, certificate of posting)
• Format: Use the scheme's official Prescribed Information document, signed by the tenant (or use the scheme's online system which generates a signed confirmation)

Collect the tenant's signature on the Prescribed Information document. Without a signature, you may struggle to prove service if there is ever a dispute.

LetCompliance keeps the deposit with the tenancy. It records when you took the money and reminds you before the 30 days run out, and the scheme certificate, the prescribed information and your proof of service are stored against the property. The tenant can see their documents in the tenant portal. If the deposit is disputed at the end, the check-in inventory with photos is already on file.

The two requirements landlords miss most

The content list above is the part everyone copies. These two are where claims are actually won.

You must certify the information is accurate. The Prescribed Information Order requires the landlord to confirm that the information given is accurate to the best of their knowledge and belief, and to give the tenant the opportunity to sign to confirm it. A bare scheme certificate forwarded by email, with no certification, is not compliant prescribed information. Most template packs include the certification wording; check yours does.

You must serve it on any "relevant person" too. If somebody other than the tenant paid the deposit (a parent, a guarantor, an employer), that person is a relevant person and must also receive the prescribed information. Serving only the tenant when a parent paid the deposit is a clean breach, and it is extremely common on student and guarantor-backed lets.

How much deposit you can hold in the first place

Prescribed information is about the deposit you took. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 caps how much that can be:

• Five weeks' rent where the annual rent is under £50,000
• Six weeks' rent where the annual rent is £50,000 or more

Calculate it properly: weekly rent is the monthly rent times twelve, divided by fifty-two. For £1,200 a month that is £276.92 a week, so five weeks is £1,384.61. Round down.

Anything above the cap is a prohibited payment. The tenant can reclaim the excess, and holding an unlawful sum sits badly alongside a possession claim.

What the Renters' Rights Act changed

With fixed terms abolished on 1 May 2026 there are no renewal events, so a tenancy simply continues as a periodic tenancy. The practical effect is that one protected deposit with prescribed information properly served covers the whole of it. There is no annual re-serving ritual and no need to re-issue prescribed information because twelve months have passed.

The exception is when the deposit itself changes. Take a top-up after a rent increase, move the deposit into a different scheme, or take the deposit over from a letting agent, and you are now protecting a different sum or holding it under a different registration. Re-register and re-serve. The agent handover is the most common moment this gets missed, and it resets your exposure to the full penalty.

Proving you served it, and what happens if you did not

Prescribed information has to be served, not merely prepared. Email is fine and is the easiest to evidence: the sent item, dated within the 30 days, with the document attached. If you hand it over in person, get a signed acknowledgement.

A worked example. The deposit of £1,384 arrives on 3 March. You protect it the same day and email the prescribed information, certified, to the tenant and to her father who paid it, on 4 March. You keep both sent items. That is the whole obligation discharged in a day, with proof.

Now the alternative. You protect on 3 March but the prescribed information goes out on 12 April. The deposit was protected, but the prescribed information was late, and the tenant can apply for a penalty of one to three times the deposit, which the court cannot reduce below one times. On £1,384 that is between £1,384 and £4,152. The court also cannot make a Section 8 possession order until the position is put right.

If you have already missed the window, serve it now anyway. It does not erase the penalty exposure, but it clears the obstacle to possession, and it demonstrates you corrected the position voluntarily.