If you are using our tenancy agreement for the scheme of your choice, you can ignore this page because the prescribed information is built into all our assured shorthold tenancy agreements (you must fill in the information of course).
Prescribed information is the information contained in The Housing (Tenancy Deposits) (Prescribed Information) Order 2007
The giving of the prescribed information is the part that almost all landlords get wrong the first time. Hopefully this guidance will assist. The prescribed information should ideally be given at the same time as the tenancy as that will make it easier to get the document signed by the tenant(s)
The guidance here is straight forward what to do guidance. For a full analysis of the actual order requiring the information see our article here.
If there is a “relevant person”
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Am I right in thinking that you can give the prescribed information to the tenants before you’ve actually protected (or even received) the deposit? (We only have experience of the DPS so this may not apply for the other schemes.) Maybe I’m missing something but I don’t see anything on the form that requires you to have the deposit already protected – or even to have already received it. It’s useful to have the deposit form completed before protecting as
then you know you have the correct details to give to the DPS re lead tenant, relevant persons etc. The scheme writes to the tenant & any relevant person with the details of their particular deposit once it’s been protected, so there’s no need for the LL to do that.
With the last tenancy I set up, we signed the AST and completed/signed the the DPS prescribed info form a few days before the tenants moved in, and I didn’t actually receive the deposit until moving-in day.Fortunately all went smoothly, but would you advocate doing it in a different order?
Hello
I don’t see any issue with how you are operating as long as all information is completed. It does raise a minor question in that section 213 Housing Act 2004 requires the prescribed information to be provided within 14 days of “receiving the deposit” which clearly you didn’t do. However, I think it must alright as I simply can’t see how a claim by a tenant could be successful on the ground that it was done too soon.
I don’t take deposits but if I were to, then I would take the deposit as soon as the tenant expressed an interest in the property. I would take the deposit as a “reservation fee” to hold the property whilst references etc. are obtained. I would use form F010 on our forms page for this purpose.
Then, I would meet the tenants on signup day (which would be same day as keys) and they would pay the first months rent, sign the tenancy with guarantor and sign prescribed information. The moment the tenancy is signed this way, the deposit previously taken now becomes a deposit “in connection with a tenancy” and the clock stats ticking