The default position is that the money is yours
Adjudicators at the deposit schemes do not start from a neutral position. They start from the assumption that the deposit belongs to the tenant, and they only move money to the landlord where the evidence proves a loss. The Tenancy Deposit Scheme says this in terms in its own guidance for members: money is awarded to a landlord or agent only if the claim is justified by evidence. That single principle decides most disputes, because most deductions arrive as an estimate, an invoice and a sentence of prose, with nothing showing the condition of the flat on the day you moved in.
It also means the burden is not on you to prove you left the place spotless. It is on the landlord to prove you did not.
Check whether the deposit was lawful before you argue about the deductions
Two separate rules apply, and landlords break the second far more often than the first.
The cap. Under the Tenant Fees Act 2019, a deposit is capped at five weeks' rent where the annual rent is under £50,000, and six weeks' rent where it is £50,000 or more. The sum is annual rent divided by 52, multiplied by five. On a £2,000 a month London flat that is £2,307.69, and a penny more is a prohibited payment. A holding deposit is capped separately at one week's rent, and a fee to vary or assign the tenancy is capped at £50 unless the landlord can evidence higher reasonable costs.
Protection and prescribed information. The deposit must be protected in an authorised scheme within 30 days of receipt, and within the same 30 days you must be given the prescribed information: which scheme holds the money, the scheme's terms, how to get it back, what happens in a dispute. Both obligations are separate. Landlords routinely do the first and forget the second, and forgetting the second is just as actionable.
If either was missed, you can apply to the county court under section 214 of the Housing Act 2004 for compensation of between one and three times the deposit, on top of the deposit itself. The court must make an award if the breach is proved. Solicitors practising in this area put the limitation period at six years from the breach, and the claim survives the end of the tenancy: you can bring it after you have moved out, and even after you have had the deposit back in full.
Under the Renters' Rights Act 2025 this leverage has grown. Section 21 is gone, so the old rule that an unprotected deposit blocked a Section 21 notice has been recast; sector legal commentary on the Act reads it as barring possession on the available grounds generally where the deposit rules were not followed. In practice, a landlord who wants you out and has never sent prescribed information has a serious problem, and knows it.
Ten minutes' work this week
Search your email for the scheme name. Then check the deposit against the scheme's own register: the DPS, TDS and mydeposits all let you look up a protection with the deposit ID, the property postcode and the tenancy start date. Compare the protection date with the date the money left your account. Then find the prescribed information document and check it was actually served, not merely referenced in a clause. If your agreement mentions it but nobody sent it, that is a breach. Our guide to what to look for in a tenancy agreement covers the clauses that commonly paper over this.
How free adjudication actually works, and the clock you can miss
All three schemes run alternative dispute resolution free of charge for both sides. An adjudicator reads the papers, in private, and splits the deposit. Nobody attends a hearing.
The trap is timing, and it differs by scheme type.
| Custodial (scheme holds the money) | Insured (landlord or agent holds the money) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who has your cash | The scheme | Your landlord or agent |
| Deadline to raise a dispute | No fixed cut-off with TDS custodial; DPS runs a negotiation and single claim process instead | mydeposits: three calendar months minus one day from moving out, or from the deposit becoming unprotected, whichever is sooner. TDS insured: three months from the end of the tenancy |
| Before you can raise it | Landlord and tenant have to try to agree first | mydeposits requires you to request the deposit back and then wait 10 days |
| Evidence window | DPS invites evidence and gives both parties 14 calendar days | Same principle: fixed window, no extensions worth relying on |
| Decision | TDS and mydeposits adjudicators aim to decide within 28 days of the evidence being in | As custodial |
Two practical consequences. If your deposit sits in an insured scheme and you spend four months emailing an agent who keeps saying the landlord is "still getting quotes", you can lose the right to adjudication entirely and be left with the county court. And if you agree in writing to a deduction to speed things along, that agreement binds you. Never write "fine, take the cleaning off" to get the rest released quickly.
The undisputed portion should be paid out regardless. Say so: "Please release the £1,340 that is not in dispute now, and refer the remaining £460 to the scheme."
Deductions adjudicators routinely reject
- Cleaning to a higher standard than check-in. The test is the condition recorded at the start, not "professionally cleaned". mydeposits states the standard plainly: the property must be returned cleaned to the same standard as at the start of the tenancy. Cleaning has been the single most common cause of dispute for years running, and it is also the deduction most often reduced, because the landlord has to prove the flat was cleaner in the first photographs than in the last.
- A blanket "professional clean" clause. Since the Tenant Fees Act, a requirement to pay for professional cleaning as a condition of the tenancy is unenforceable. A landlord can claim the cost of cleaning that is actually needed. They cannot charge you for a receipt.
- Betterment on part-worn items. A carpet with five years of a ten-year life left, stained by you, is not a new carpet's worth of loss. Adjudicators apportion by remaining lifespan and deduct for wear that would have happened anyway. The same logic applies to sofas, mattresses, worktops and blinds.
- Ordinary redecoration. Scuffed magnolia after two years of occupation is fair wear and tear. Picture hooks, minor marks and faded paint sit on the landlord's side of the line. A wall you painted teal without permission does not.
- Invoices with no before-and-after. A £450 quote with no check-in evidence is a number, not a loss. Adjudicators can and do award nothing on properly incurred costs where condition at the start was never recorded.
- Administration or "dispute handling" charges. Prohibited payments under the Tenant Fees Act do not become lawful by being taken from a deposit.
- Rent-free void periods. A landlord cannot deduct for time the flat sat empty after a lawful notice.
Evidence that wins
Dated photographs beat memory every time, and the schemes say so. What persuades an adjudicator is a matched pair: the same corner of the same room, at check-in and at check-out, both dated. Take the check-out set on the day you hand back the keys, with a wide shot of each room plus close-ups of anything contested, plus meter readings.
If you have a signed check-in inventory, quote it back by page and line. If the landlord's schedule of deductions cites items the inventory does not mention, say that in one sentence and stop; adjudicators dislike essays.
Keep the correspondence. Emails reporting a leak in November are the reason mould in March is not your bill.
Tenancies now end whenever, and often without a check-out
Phase one of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 came into force on 1 May 2026. Existing assured shorthold tenancies converted automatically to assured periodic tenancies, fixed terms fell away, and a tenant can now end a periodic tenancy at any time on at least two months' notice. That is a real gain. It has also broken the old rhythm of the London market, where check-outs clustered around September and the agent had a clerk booked weeks ahead.
Now a tenancy can end on a Tuesday in February with nobody from the agency available, and because the Tenant Fees Act stopped landlords charging tenants for inventories and check-out reports, plenty of landlords have quietly stopped paying for them. If there is no clerked check-out, you have two options and should take both. Do your own: video walkthrough, room by room, narrating the date, with the day's newspaper or a phone screen showing the date in the first frame. And send it to the agent the same day with a line inviting them to inspect within seven days and to raise any concerns in writing.
If your original tenancy never had a check-in inventory, say so early and explicitly in the dispute. Absence of a check-in record is not a neutral fact. It disables almost every condition-based deduction the landlord might want to make, because there is no baseline to measure against.
One more thing worth doing before you serve notice: check what the landlord is charging next. Rent review clauses in tenancies entered into before commencement are now unenforceable, and increases go through the statutory route, which you can challenge at the First-tier Tribunal.
What to send the agent
Keep it short, factual and dated. Something close to this:
Thank you for the schedule of proposed deductions dated 14 June. I do not agree to the £320 cleaning charge or the £680 carpet replacement. There is no check-in inventory recording the condition of the carpet, and the photographs I took on 3 March 2024 show the marks you have identified. Please release the undisputed balance within 10 days. If we cannot agree the remainder, please confirm you will refer it to the Tenancy Deposit Scheme, and confirm the date the deposit was protected and the date the prescribed information was served.
That last sentence does a lot of work. An agent who cannot answer it usually finds the deductions less pressing than they were.
For context on scale: the Tenancy Deposit Scheme's 2024/25 statistical briefing, reported by the NRLA, puts 4.7 million deposits under protection in England and Wales with an average deposit of £1,175, and around 42% of TDS disputes were settled by the parties before formal adjudication. London deposits run well above that average, since the ONS Price Index of Private Rents had the average English rent at £1,438 a month in April 2026 and London sits considerably higher again. On a five-week cap, that is real money to leave on the table because an email deadline slipped.