Tessa Shepperson at Landlord Law has a report from a landlord’s solicitor on another tenancy deposit case in the County Court, this time Bedford County Court.
In short, the Court found that payment of the deposit and provision of the required information by the landlord prior to the issue of a claim (and, County Court obiter, prior to hearing of the claim) meant that a claim for 3x the deposit failed. This claim was struck out under CPR 24. Note that this was after the landlord had failed to put the deposit into a scheme for over 13 months.
A practically interesting side point is that, because the tenancy had become a statutory periodic before the landlord protected the deposit, the private insurance deposit schemes (TDS and MyDeposits) wouldn’t take the deposit, so only the statutory scheme (DPS) was available. Odd. I have heard the contrary.
[For all tenancy deposit case posts click here]
Hi NearlyLegal
Love the blog – literally an education reading it!
Just curious though, whats the difference between – private insurance deposit schemes (TDS and MyDeposits) and the statutory scheme? Are both options independent and do they operate the same way? Any obvious pro’s and cons?
best wishes
Martin
@Martin Nolan: Frankly, dunno. The only significant difference that I can see is that the DPS requires the deposit to be handed over to the scheme, while the private insurance schemes mean that the agent or landlord can hold the deposit, with required mediation/dispute resolution added. As for the rest – not my turf, I’m afraid.