The Dispute Service has revealed the biggest cause of complaints across all its schemes, with cleaning come out on top.
The TDS annual report – representing the 12 months to March 2018 – shows cleaning made up 54% of disputes in its insured scheme and 51% for its custodial option.
Its Northern Ireland subsidiary saw 45% of disputes cover cleaning, while the figure was as high as 62% for the SafeDeposits scheme in Scotland.
Damage was the second most common complaint across all schemes followed by decoration.
The annual report revealed that TDS has seen the number of deposits protected across all its schemes increase by 6.8% annually to 1.48m with a total value of £1.82bn.
Most of this, £1.6bn, was in the insured scheme.
Growth was highest in Northern Ireland, up 13.85%, followed by Scotland at 8% and England and Wales at 6.52%.
The reports showed 1.13% of deposits or 14,430 in the insured scheme had disputes raised, with 0.49% or 200 in the custodial one.
In Northern Ireland, 1.05% of deposits or 460 had disputes, rising to 2.94% or 3,530 in Scotland.
It does not reveal how many disputes were upheld, rejected, or settled with amounts going to both landlord and tenant.
The report also revealed that the TDS is working on a single website for users to access the TDS insured and custodial schemes and is developing software that would allow our users to send and return deposits in ‘real time’ through its own platforms.
TDS also provides adjudication for deposit replacement scheme Zero Deposit and said feedback has been positive so far.
Steve Harriott, group chief executive of TDS, 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 past 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.”
https://www.tenancydepositscheme.com/resources/files/Annual_Review_2017-18.pdf
Nothing there that any landlord or letting agent would not be aware of but I am sure the TDS appreciate the advertising of their services.
You must be logged in to like or dislike this comments.
Click to login
Don't have an account? Click here to register
We use the TDS and are very happy with it. My only gripe with the whole thing is that the tenant can open a dispute and isn’t required to put anything in it! It means that I have absolutely no idea what angle they are going to use for their dispute yet I’m required to submit evidence for it. The tenant then puts theirs in after they’ve seen what you’ve got. If they know the system the opportunity for them to spin a yarn using one-sided evidence is really high (eg submitting emails with your answers cut out or saying they haven’t received things), then there’s no opportunity to put further evidence in it to disprove them afterwards. The outcome is that you end up spending days putting all sorts of irrelevant nonsense into it in the hope that you’re covering all the bases. Really annoying!
You must be logged in to like or dislike this comments.
Click to login
Don't have an account? Click here to register
Hi Wanderer,
Glad to hear you’re happy with our service. Tenants are not asked to submit evidence first as the burden of proof is on the agent/landlord to submit the claim they wish to make against the deposit and their supporting evidence. The tenant is then asked to respond to the claims accordingly and provide any evidence which they may have to counter the claims made.
If you have any queries regarding this, please feel free to contact our team and we’ll be more than happy to help!
Michael
You must be logged in to like or dislike this comments.
Click to login
Don't have an account? Click here to register
No s**t Sherlock! Tenants not cleaning! At least currently a landlord has a chance of getting the cleaning cost paid from deposit, next year I predict Money Online will be the most popular site for landlords and agents to recoup the monies and register CCJ against offenders!
You must be logged in to like or dislike this comments.
Click to login
Don't have an account? Click here to register