The number that should change how you pack
The Deposit Protection Service's analysis of 2025 claims, published in June 2026, found that cleaning was the reason behind 29.37% of all deposit claims, the fifth year running it has topped the list. Damage came second on 18.42%, rent arrears third on 16.45%, and redecoration accounted for 10.88%. Meanwhile the Tenancy Deposit Scheme's Statistical Briefing 2025 reported that only about 1% of protected deposits in England and Wales went to formal adjudication in 2024/25, some 46,950 cases across the TDS Group.
Read those two facts together and the picture is clear. Most deductions are for cleaning, most tenants never challenge anything, and the small number who do are judged entirely on paper by someone who will never see the flat. The adjudicator is not there to be fair to both sides in a woolly sense. They decide whether the landlord has proved a loss. If the landlord cannot, the money comes back to you.
What changed on 1 May 2026
The Renters' Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025, and the government published its implementation roadmap on 13 November 2025. Phase one took effect on 1 May 2026: almost all existing assured shorthold tenancies converted automatically into periodic assured tenancies, fixed terms fell away, and no new Section 21 notice can be served.
The practical consequence is a lot of movement. Tenants who were locked into a fixed term until next spring are now on a rolling tenancy they can end with notice, and plenty are using it. Every one of those moves ends with a deposit sitting in a scheme and a landlord or agent deciding what to claim from it.
What did not change is the deposit regime itself. Protection still runs on the Housing Act 2004: the deposit must be in one of the three approved schemes within 30 days of receipt, with the prescribed information served on you in the same window, and the penalty for failure is still between one and three times the deposit. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 cap also stands, five weeks' rent where the annual rent is under £50,000.
One genuinely new rule is worth knowing if you are signing somewhere else. Under the Act, a landlord or agent cannot invite or accept rent before the tenancy agreement is signed, and after signing can require no more than one month's rent in advance. Clauses demanding more during the tenancy are void. If an agent in Hackney or Wandsworth asks for six months upfront, that request is a red flag about how they will handle your deposit too. Our guide to what London agents can legally demand sets out the detail.
The three schemes and their adjudication routes
Every deposit sits with the Deposit Protection Service, the Tenancy Deposit Scheme or mydeposits. Each offers a custodial version (the scheme holds the cash, free to the landlord) and an insured version (the landlord or agent holds the cash and pays a fee). The difference matters at the end, because with an insured deposit the money is in the landlord's account and has to be lodged with the scheme before adjudication can start.
| Who holds the money | How the dispute starts | Published process | |
|---|---|---|---|
| DPS | Scheme (custodial) or landlord (insured) | Either party raises a dispute after the repayment request | Free alternative dispute resolution, decided on written evidence |
| TDS | Scheme (custodial) or landlord (insured) | Tenant or landlord applies for adjudication | TDS says it normally completes adjudication within 28 calendar days of having all parties' agreement and all the evidence |
| mydeposits | Scheme (custodial) or landlord (insured) | Tenant raises dispute with initial evidence | Tenant has 10 working days for further evidence, landlord 20 working days to respond, and must lodge the disputed sum and choose ADR or court within the first 10 of those; both sides get a final 5 working days |
Three things follow from how this works. Adjudication is free and it is binding once both sides agree to it. The adjudicator does not inspect the flat or ring anyone. And the undisputed part of the deposit should be released to you while the argument over the rest continues, so never let an agent hold back the whole sum over a £90 cleaning claim.
The deadlines that give you leverage
- 30 days from receipt for the landlord to protect the deposit and serve the prescribed information. Miss either and you have a claim under section 214 of the Housing Act 2004.
- 10 days from agreement on how the deposit is split for the money to be repaid. This is the deadline agents quietly ignore. Chase it in writing on day eleven.
- The scheme's evidence windows, which are short and unforgiving. mydeposits gives a tenant 10 working days for supplementary evidence. Assume you have a fortnight to assemble everything, not a month.
- Your own check-out day, which is the last moment you can photograph the flat empty and clean. There is no second chance at this.
Deductions that do not survive adjudication
Professional cleaning clauses. Since the Tenant Fees Act 2019 came into force (1 June 2019 for new tenancies, 1 June 2020 for all of them), a landlord cannot require you to pay for professional cleaning as a condition of the tenancy. The standard is that the property is returned in the same state of cleanliness as at check-in, allowing for fair wear and tear. A clause saying "the tenant shall have the property professionally cleaned by a contractor approved by the landlord" is a prohibited payment. You can clean it yourself to that standard. Given cleaning featured in 54% of TDS dispute cases in the 2025 briefing, this single point is the most valuable one in this article.
Betterment. A landlord cannot use your money to end up with something better than they started with. If a ten-year-old carpet in a Zone 3 flat is stained, the claim is not the cost of a new carpet. It is a proportion reflecting the carpet's remaining useful life. Adjudicators apply this routinely and it is where most large claims collapse.
Fair wear and tear billed as damage. Scuffed magnolia after two years of a shared flat in Walthamstow is wear. A hole punched in a door is damage. Faded curtains are wear. A burn in the sofa is damage. The test takes account of the length of the tenancy, the number of occupants and the age and quality of the item.
Unevidenced sums. A round number with no invoice, no quote and no photograph is close to worthless. If the landlord has not spent the money and cannot show what it would cost, the claim usually fails or is heavily reduced.
The evidence pack that persuades an adjudicator
Assemble it in this order and label the files plainly, for example 01-check-in-inventory-signed.pdf.
- The signed check-in inventory, with your comments on it. If you never signed one, say so explicitly: an unsigned inventory carries very little weight against you.
- Dated photographs at check-in and check-out, of the same rooms from the same angles. Wide shot, then close-ups of anything already marked or worn. Phone timestamps are fine.
- The check-out report, plus your written response to it sent within days, not weeks.
- The tenancy agreement, so the adjudicator can see the actual cleaning and redecoration clauses. If you are unsure what you signed, our note on what to look for in a tenancy agreement covers the usual traps.
- Correspondence, in full. Every repair you reported and the reply, or the silence. Mould that you reported in November and nobody attended to is not your damage.
- Receipts and meter readings, including your own cleaning invoice if you paid someone.
- A one-page summary listing each deduction claimed, the amount, your position, and the exhibit number that supports it. Adjudicators read a lot of files. Make yours the easy one.
What to say to the agent, in writing, as soon as the deductions arrive: "Please provide the check-in inventory, the check-out report, dated photographs of each item claimed, and invoices or quotes for the work. Please also release the undisputed balance of £X within ten days. I do not accept the professional cleaning charge, as a clause requiring professional cleaning is a prohibited payment under the Tenant Fees Act 2019."
Send it by email. Keep it civil and short. Most agents reduce or drop a claim at this point rather than write up an evidence bundle.
If the deposit was never protected
Check the deposit is registered by searching each scheme's online checker with your postcode and tenancy dates. If it is not there, or the prescribed information never arrived, you have a claim in the county court under section 214 of the Housing Act 2004 for the return of the deposit plus a penalty of between one and three times its value. The right survives the end of the tenancy, so moving out does not extinguish it.
Send a letter before action giving 14 days, setting out the date you paid the deposit, the amount, the absence of protection and the remedy you want. Many landlords settle at that stage. If not, it is a money claim, and the paperwork is the same evidence pack described above with the addition of your bank statement showing the deposit leaving your account.
The penalty is discretionary within that one to three times band, so present the facts flatly rather than emotionally: date paid, date of the tenancy, no scheme record, no prescribed information.
What the database and the ombudsman will change
Phase two of the Act brings the Private Rented Sector Database, which the government's roadmap has rolling out from late 2026 on a phased basis, with landlords required to register themselves and each property. Compliance guides published this summer put the civil penalty for failure at up to £7,000, rising to as much as £40,000 for serious or repeated breaches, and an unregistered landlord will struggle to obtain a possession order. For tenants, the useful part is visibility: a searchable record of who owns the flat and whether they are compliant, which is exactly the sort of thing you want before you hand over five weeks' rent.
The PRS Landlord Ombudsman comes later. The roadmap points to mandatory landlord membership in 2028, once a scheme administrator has been appointed and scaled up. Until then, a deposit dispute still goes to scheme adjudication or the county court, though if a letting agent is involved you can already complain to their redress scheme about the way the deduction was handled.
One thing to do this week if you are leaving a tenancy soon: book a slot in your calendar for the day before check-out and photograph every room empty, including inside the oven and the fridge seals, plus the meter readings. That set of photographs is worth more than any argument you will make later. And if the rent increase notice that prompted your move looks steep, the tribunal route in our guide to challenging a London rent increase is worth reading before you commit to moving at all.