Deposit Prescribed Information UK (30-Day Rule)

What Is Prescribed Information?

When you take a tenancy deposit, you must do two things within 30 days:

Prescribed Information is a specific document, defined by the Housing (Tenancy Deposits) (Prescribed Information) Order 2007. It is not just a receipt or a note, it is a formal document with mandatory content.

What Must Prescribed Information Include?

The Prescribed Information document must include:

Practical tip: All three approved schemes provide a Prescribed Information template. Use their official template rather than writing your own.

What Happens If You Don't Provide Prescribed Information?

The consequences are severe:

1. Court can order payment of 1 to 3× the deposit

The court has discretion to order you to pay the tenant between 1 and 3 times the deposit→ amount as a penalty. On a typical £1,200 deposit, that is £1,200 to £3,600.

2. The court can refuse a possession order

You can still serve a Section 8 notice, but the court cannot make a possession order until the deposit is protected in a scheme (or returned to the tenant) and the prescribed information given. Section 21, which deposit breaches also blocked — was abolished on 1 May 2026.

3. No time limit on claims

Tenants can make a claim at any point during the tenancy, not just at the end. Even if the deposit was taken years ago, a late PI claim is still actionable.

The 30-Day Clock: What Triggers It?

The 30-day window starts from the day you receive the deposit, not the tenancy start date, not when the tenant moves in.

If you receive a holding deposit that later converts to a full deposit, the 30-day window starts from when the holding deposit was received (subject to scheme rules).

What if you miss the deadline?

Protect the deposit immediately and serve Prescribed Information as soon as possible. The tenant can still claim, but courts may award a lower penalty (1×) if you acted quickly and in good faith.

How to Serve Prescribed Information Correctly

Collect the tenant's signature on the Prescribed Information document. Without a signature, you may struggle to prove service if there is ever a dispute.

LetCompliance tracks your deposit protection deadlines, e-signs the prescribed information with a tribunal-grade audit certificate, delivers it through a free tenant portal, and builds a dispute pack if a deposit is ever contested.

The two requirements landlords miss most

The content list above is the part everyone copies. These two are where claims are actually won.

You must certify the information is accurate. The Prescribed Information Order requires the landlord to confirm that the information given is accurate to the best of their knowledge and belief, and to give the tenant the opportunity to sign to confirm it. A bare scheme certificate forwarded by email, with no certification, is not compliant prescribed information. Most template packs include the certification wording; check yours does.

You must serve it on any "relevant person" too. If somebody other than the tenant paid the deposit, a parent, a guarantor, an employer, that person is a relevant person and must also receive the prescribed information. Serving only the tenant when a parent paid the deposit is a clean breach, and it is extremely common on student and guarantor-backed lets.

How much deposit you can hold in the first place

Prescribed information is about the deposit you took. The Tenant Fees Act→ 2019 caps how much that can be:

Calculate it properly: weekly rent is the monthly rent times twelve, divided by fifty-two. For £1,200 a month that is £276.92 a week, so five weeks is £1,384.61. Round down.

Anything above the cap is a prohibited payment. The tenant can reclaim the excess, and holding an unlawful sum sits badly alongside a possession claim.

What the Renters' Rights Act changed

With fixed terms abolished on 1 May 2026 there are no renewal events, so a tenancy simply continues as a periodic tenancy. The practical effect is that one protected deposit with prescribed information properly served covers the whole of it. There is no annual re-serving ritual and no need to re-issue prescribed information because twelve months have passed.

The exception is when the deposit itself changes. Take a top-up after a rent increase, move the deposit into a different scheme, or take the deposit over from a letting agent, and you are now protecting a different sum or holding it under a different registration. Re-register and re-serve. The agent handover is the most common moment this gets missed, and it resets your exposure to the full penalty.

Proving you served it, and what happens if you did not

Prescribed information has to be served, not merely prepared. Email is fine and is the easiest to evidence: the sent item, dated within the 30 days, with the document attached. If you hand it over in person, get a signed acknowledgement.

A worked example. The deposit of £1,384 arrives on 3 March. You protect it the same day and email the prescribed information, certified, to the tenant and to her father who paid it, on 4 March. You keep both sent items. That is the whole obligation discharged in a day, with proof.

Now the alternative. You protect on 3 March but the prescribed information goes out on 12 April. The deposit was protected, but the prescribed information was late, and the tenant can apply for a penalty of one to three times the deposit, which the court cannot reduce below one times. On £1,384 that is between £1,384 and £4,152. The court also cannot make a Section 8 possession order until the position is put right.

If you have already missed the window, serve it now anyway. It does not erase the penalty exposure, but it clears the obstacle to possession, and it demonstrates you corrected the position voluntarily.