Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department has taken to establish the role of letting agents in ensuring that landlords comply with their obligation to protect tenants' monies in tenancy deposit schemes.

Under the Housing Act 2004 landlords letting their properties under Assured Shorthold Tenancies must protect their tenant’s deposit in one of three government authorised schemes.

Landlords who fail to comply with the statutory requirements are liable for a mandatory financial penalty of between one and three times the amount of the deposit, payable to the tenant, on the tenant bringing proceedings to the County Court under section 214 of the Housing Act 2004. Non-compliance also affects Landlords' ability to rely on Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988.

The landlord must protect the deposit in one of the schemes within 30 calendar days from the day the deposit is received and must provide the tenant with details (Prescribed Information) of how their deposit has been protected within the same 30 day period.

In many cases, the landlord will enter into a contractual arrangement with a letting agent which allows the agent to carry out these duties on the landlord’s behalf. However, it is the landlord who remains responsible for carrying out these statutory obligations.