DPS Prescribed Information Template — Custodial and Insured

If your tenant’s deposit is protected with the Deposit Protection Service, the prescribed information you serve has to describe that scheme — its contact details, its dispute service, and the documents the DPS specifically requires you to hand over. Prescribed information that names no scheme, or names the wrong one, does not discharge the duty in Section 213(5) of the Housing Act 2004.

The DPS is unusual in one respect that catches landlords out. There is no separate "DPS prescribed information leaflet" to hunt down. The 2007 Order requires information contained in a leaflet supplied by the scheme, and the DPS satisfies that with its Terms and Conditions. Its own forms say so: the custodial form tells you to provide a copy of the DPS terms and conditions alongside it, and the insured form requires them to be attached. Serve prescribed information without them and the package is incomplete.

Use this template for either DPS product. On the custodial scheme the DPS holds the money, protection is free, and the DPS generates prescribed information in your account for you to complete and serve. On the insured scheme you keep the money, you pay a protection fee for each deposit, and nothing is prepared for you.

Either way the clock is the same. Thirty days from the day the deposit reaches you — not from the day the tenancy agreement was signed. Miss it and the tenant can claim between one and three times the deposit under Section 214, and you lose most possession grounds until you put it right.

What the DPS does differently. The scheme is a trading name of Computershare Investor Services PLC. Correspondence — and the address that belongs in prescribed information — is The Deposit Protection Service, The Pavilions, Bridgwater Road, Bristol, BS99 6AA. The helpline is 0330 303 0030, open 8am to 6.30pm on working days.

Its dispute service has a ceiling most landlords never hear about. The DPS will not take a case to adjudication where the deposit is £5,000 or more — those parties are left to the courts. For everything below that, adjudication is free, both parties must consent and be bound by it, evidence is due within 14 calendar days of the invitation, and the decision usually follows within 15 working days. It cannot be appealed through the scheme.

If the other side goes quiet, the DPS runs a Statutory Declaration Process: at least 14 calendar days after the tenancy ends, the claiming party swears a declaration before a solicitor and the other party gets 14 calendar days to respond.

Wales is a different regime. Deposits on Welsh occupation contracts fall under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 with its own required-information rules and its own vocabulary. This template covers England.