This guide covers England. Welsh occupation contracts have separate required-information rules and a different court procedure, explained in our deposit claim form guide.
Protecting your deposit is only half of what the law requires. The other half, serving you the prescribed information, is where a surprising number of landlords fall short, and where tenants have a genuine claim worth pursuing. Many landlords fail to provide compliant prescribed information within the mandatory 30-day window.
Prescribed information is the information your landlord must give you about your deposit protection. For tenancies covered by England's Housing Act 2004 scheme, it must be provided within 30 days of receiving the deposit, in accordance with the Housing (Tenancy Deposits) (Prescribed Information) Order 2007. A missed deadline or failure to provide the required information can support a Section 214 compensation claim. A different document format, or an immaterial error, does not automatically establish a breach.
Plenty of tenants never receive a compliant document and never realise they have a claim. This article explains exactly what prescribed information must include, what a breach looks like, and what you can do about it.
What prescribed information must a landlord give you?
Article 2 of the 2007 Order sets the information required in England. A protection certificate alone may not contain it all. Check for:
- The scheme administrator's name, address, telephone number, email address and any fax number.
- The information in the scheme's leaflet explaining deposit protection.
- The scheme's repayment procedure at the end of the tenancy, including what happens if either party cannot be contacted or does not respond.
- The procedures for disputed deductions and the scheme's service for resolving disputes without court proceedings.
- The deposit amount and property address.
- Names, addresses, telephone numbers and any email or fax details for the landlord, tenant and any relevant person, including the tenant's contact details for the end of the tenancy.
- The circumstances in which the landlord may retain money, tied to the tenancy terms.
- A signed landlord certificate confirming the tenancy and deposit particulars are accurate to the best of their knowledge and belief, and that the tenant had an opportunity to sign to confirm accuracy. The Order allows a qualifying initial agent to provide this certification on the landlord's behalf.
A “relevant person” is someone who paid the deposit on your behalf under arrangements made with you. A guarantor or letting agent is not automatically one. Section 213 requires the information to be given to you and any relevant person, not just to list their contact details.
The date the deposit was received is useful for checking the deadline, but Article 2 does not itself make that date a required field. Check the required contents rather than treating every difference from a scheme template as a breach.
The three schemes provide templates to help landlords supply the required information. Using the correct scheme's template is useful, but the law does not require that particular layout. What matters is whether the landlord supplied the required information and certification accurately and on time. Check a generic letter's contents rather than assuming its format alone makes it invalid.
How long does a landlord have to serve prescribed information?
Landlords must serve the prescribed information within 30 days of receiving your deposit. That is a hard 30 days, not "31" and not "as soon as reasonably practicable".
This deadline applies from the date the money changes hands, not from the date the tenancy officially starts. If you paid a holding deposit that converted into a security deposit on signing, the clock starts from when the landlord first received funds.
The Court of Appeal held in Superstrike Ltd v Rodrigues [2013] EWCA Civ 669 that a statutory periodic tenancy arising when a fixed term ended was a new tenancy, which once created a fresh obligation to protect the deposit and serve prescribed information. That point is now largely historical. Section 215B of the Housing Act 2004 (added by the Deregulation Act 2015) means a landlord does not have to re-protect or re-serve where the deposit stays in the same scheme with the same details, and the Renters' Rights Act 2025 abolished fixed terms on 1 May 2026, so the fixed-term-rolling-into-periodic mechanism no longer arises for new tenancies.
What decides it is not the date your fixed term ended but whether protection stayed continuous. Section 215B only shields a landlord who kept the deposit in the same scheme with the prescribed information served on time. So a claim can still exist where the deposit was never properly protected in the first place, or was moved to a different scheme along the way, whenever the tenancy rolled over. The roughly six-year limit on these claims will still rule many historical breaches out.
If you are unsure whether your deposit was protected in time or whether you received valid prescribed information, Remedy's free instant assessment covers deposit protection compliance as part of its standard landlord and property check, with no credit card required.
What counts as a material defect in prescribed information
Not every minor error in a prescribed information document will ground a compensation claim. The courts look at whether there was a 'material' failure, meaning whether the information was so incomplete or inaccurate that it failed to serve its purpose of informing you of your rights.
Defects that courts have consistently treated as material include:
- Entirely wrong scheme details (e.g. the landlord listed TDS but protected with DPS)
- No information about the dispute resolution procedure
- Missing or incorrect deposit amount
- Missing required information about how the scheme works
- Prescribed information served after the 30-day deadline with no valid re-service
Defects that courts have sometimes treated as non-material include minor typos in contact details, provided the document was otherwise complete and functional.
Use the correct scheme template as a checklist, then compare any apparent omission with Article 2's required contents and certification. Templates can include extra fields. A missing optional field, different layout or absence of a separate leaflet does not itself establish a breach if the required information was supplied in another form.
For more on what constitutes a breach and how to value it, see our guide on deposit protection violations and how to claim compensation.
How much compensation can you claim for a prescribed information breach
The court has discretion under Section 214 of the Housing Act 2004 to award between one and three times your deposit amount, on top of the return of the deposit itself.
On a £1,200 deposit, a successful claim at the maximum multiplier produces a compensation award of £3,600, plus the original £1,200 back. Total recovery: £4,800 from a single compliance failure.
Courts determine where in the 1x to 3x range to pitch the award based on:
- How severe the failure was (complete non-compliance versus a technical defect)
- Whether the landlord showed any awareness of the obligation
- The landlord's conduct during proceedings
- How long the breach persisted
A landlord who never protected the deposit at all and never served any prescribed information is likely to face the upper end of the range. A landlord who protected on time but omitted some required scheme information may face a lower multiplier.
You bring the claim in the county court using a Part 8 procedure. There is no tribunal for this particular claim. If you want help understanding the court process, our guide on the N208 Form Part 8 Claim for tenant landlord disputes walks through each step.
Before filing, most tenants send a letter before action to give the landlord a chance to settle. A well-drafted letter, citing Section 214 and the specific defect, resolves a meaningful proportion of these claims without court. Remedy generates AI-drafted letters citing the exact legislation relevant to your situation.
Does Section 21 abolition change anything for deposit compliance?
Yes, materially. From 1 May 2026, Section 21 no longer exists as a route for landlords to end a tenancy. Under the Renters' Rights Act 2025, landlords can only recover possession through Section 8 grounds.
Deposit compliance is directly tied to a landlord's ability to use certain Section 8 grounds. A landlord who has not complied with deposit protection and prescribed information requirements faces a much weaker position in possession proceedings, and the courts are increasingly treating compliance history as relevant context.
More practically: with no Section 21 fallback, landlords who failed on deposit obligations can no longer rely on a quick no-fault eviction to flush out a difficult tenant. If you raise a deposit claim, your landlord cannot simply serve a Section 21 notice to pressure you into dropping it. That leverage is gone.
For a full breakdown of what the removal of Section 21 means for your tenancy, see Section 21 ends on 1 May 2026: what that means for your tenancy.
Post-May 2026, deposit compliance claims carry lower risk for tenants to bring, because the retaliatory eviction route has been closed off. If you have been holding back from making a claim because you feared eviction, the legal picture has shifted.
How to check whether you received valid prescribed information
Collect everything the landlord supplied about the deposit, including the protection certificate, scheme information and any signed form. The information can appear in different documents. Its contents, certification and delivery matter more than whether it is on scheme-headed paper.
Then check the following:
The scheme name matches your certificate. If your deposit certificate says DPS but the prescribed information document references TDS, something is wrong.
The 30-day window. Compare when the landlord received the deposit with when the required information was given to you and any relevant person. A date printed on the form is not proof of service. Keep payment records, emails and delivery evidence.
The dispute resolution section. The document must explain how to raise a dispute with the scheme if you and your landlord disagree about deductions. If that section is absent or vague, the document is defective.
The scheme information and certification. Check that you received the information in the scheme's leaflet, as well as repayment, missing-party and dispute procedures. Look for the signed certification and evidence that you had an opportunity to confirm the details. You do not have to sign for the landlord to comply.
If you did not receive a document at all, that is the clearest form of non-compliance.
Once you have identified a potential breach, keep copies of everything: your original tenancy agreement, any deposit receipt, the prescribed information document you received (or a note that you received nothing), and any correspondence about the deposit. This evidence is what your claim rests on. For a full guide on how to check if your deposit is protected, including the official scheme lookup tools, we have a separate walkthrough.
What to do if your landlord is in breach right now
You do not need to wait until your tenancy ends to bring a prescribed information claim. The claim can be made at any point during the tenancy, as well as after it ends.
The practical sequence looks like this:
- Confirm the breach by reviewing your documents against the scheme template.
- Send a letter before action citing Section 214 of the Housing Act 2004, specifying the defect, and giving the landlord 14 days to respond with either a settlement offer or a valid explanation.
- If the landlord does not respond or refuses, file in the county court using the Part 8 procedure.
Most cases settle after step two. A landlord who receives a properly drafted letter citing the statute and the specific failure knows the claim is credible. Settling at 1x or 1.5x the deposit is a common outcome when the breach is technical rather than a complete failure to comply.
Remedy drafts the letter before action for you, citing the exact legislation and the specific failure identified in your case. The platform also runs a deposit protection compliance check as part of its free instant assessment, so you can confirm whether you have a claim before spending any time drafting letters. If you want the full platform, including letter generation and tribunal support, it is available as a one-off £40 payment. If you want a solicitor, you can contact one listed in our legal help directory. Each one is independent, and you contact them directly.
For more on how the letter before action process works in landlord disputes, see our guide on writing a letter before action to your landlord.
Prescribed information compliance is one of the most commonly breached deposit obligations in the UK, and one of the most straightforward to identify. If your landlord handed you a protection certificate but never gave you the full prescribed information document, or gave you something missing required sections, you have a claim. On a £1,200 deposit, even a 1x award is worth pursuing. At 3x, you are looking at £3,600 in compensation.
Start by running Remedy's free instant assessment. Share your tenancy details and Remedy will check your landlord's deposit protection compliance, identify any prescribed information failures, and give you a clear picture of what you could claim, with no credit card required. If there is a breach, you will know about it within minutes.
