Generation Rent has called for the UK’s system of official rental deposit schemes to be scrapped and replaced by a single custodial non-profit provider to make life easier for tenants.

The claims are within a report launched during a round table attended by at least one of the UK’s three Government-approved schemes during which the group also called for tenants’ deposits to be pooled and invested.

It wants the interest used to cover scheme running costs, as well as advice and advocacy for tenants, deposit ‘passporting’ – allowing tenants to transfer deposits from one tenancy to another – and a deposit guarantee scheme for low-income renters.

‘Short-changed: making deposit protection work for renters’, adds: “While landlords and letting agents may benefit from any competition between the tenancy deposit protection providers and can profit from the interest accrued on some deposits, the system is needlessly complex for renters. “The various schemes mean tenants find it difficult to understand rules and requirements.”

Disputed

Generation Rent also says insurance-backed schemes give providers less control when a deposit is disputed.

“The fact that tenants cannot protect their own deposit by registering it with a scheme themselves, instead giving it to a landlord who chooses a protection scheme, complicates this situation further,” it adds.

The campaign group also believes tenants shouldn’t have to go to court for cases in which landlords/agents have not protected their deposit, or where their landlord has refused to accept adjudication or abide by its decision.

Instead, they could use the First-Tier Tribunal or new Private Landlord Ombudsman.”

“Instead, they could use the First-Tier Tribunal or new Private Landlord Ombudsman”, it says.

Among its recommendations are requiring a landlord or agent to return a tenant’s deposit at the end of a tenancy, or to claim deductions on it, within 14 days; that deposits paid by lodgers and licensed occupiers (such as those in student accommodation) should be required to be placed in a protection scheme; and that tenants should be able to pay deposits in instalments, without a landlord’s agreement.

The Neg has approached all three deposit schemes for comment, although one, Mydeposits, has today released industry data that it claims refutes criticisms that landlords keep to many deposits in part or in full, and that disputing deductions takes too long.