Tenancy Deposit
Legal Guides
Everything you need to understand about deposit protection, fair wear and tear, cleaning charges, and how disputes actually work in England. Written from experience, backed by law.
Deposit Protection Guide
How the three UK deposit schemes work, what landlords must do, and what happens when they don't. Includes an interactive dispute decision tool.
Fair Wear & Tear
What counts as normal use and what counts as damage — room by room, item by item. The betterment rule, depreciation, and how inventory reports decide everything.
What Evidence Wins Disputes
The evidence hierarchy, what adjudicators actually weigh, photo standards, cleaning documentation, and timing. Built around real TDS adjudication data.
Can Landlords Charge for Cleaning?
The Tenant Fees Act explained from the landlord's perspective. When deductions hold up, when they fail, and the mistakes that cost thousands in lost claims.
Deposit Not Protected?
The 1x–3x compensation rule, Section 21 consequences, late protection, prescribed information, and no-deposit schemes. One of the strongest tenant positions in UK law.
Unreasonable Deductions
The seven most common unreasonable deductions and why they get rejected. Real adjudication outcomes, betterment, inflated costs, and timing issues.
Where Are You in the Tenancy Journey?
Each guide stands alone, but they connect. Here’s which to read based on where you are right now.
Before you move in
Understand deposit protection, check your inventory, know your baseline
During the tenancy
Document maintenance, understand your responsibilities, report issues in writing
Before checkout
Clean to inventory standard, gather evidence, time it right
If there's a dispute
Assess whether deductions are reasonable, check your legal position, build your case
Why We Built These Guides
Over years of working alongside letting agents, inventory clerks, and landlords across London, we’ve seen the same disputes play out thousands of times. The patterns are remarkably consistent: tenants don’t understand what they’ll be measured against, landlords don’t know how to present evidence that adjudicators will accept, and both sides lose time and money on disputes that could have been avoided.
These guides exist because most of the information available online about deposit disputes is either too vague to be useful, written by people who’ve never seen a checkout report, or so buried in legal language that no one without a law degree can follow it. We wanted to create something different — practical, specific, and based on what actually happens in real disputes, not what should happen in theory.
Every guide includes an interactive tool because we believe the best way to understand your position is to explore it — not just read about it. Whether you’re a tenant checking whether a deduction is reasonable, or a landlord assessing whether your evidence will hold up, the tools give you a personalised assessment based on your specific situation.
We’re a cleaning company, not a law firm. We can’t give legal advice and these guides don’t constitute it. What we can do is share what we’ve learned from a decade of working at the intersection of cleaning, checkout inspections, and deposit disputes — and present the publicly available law and scheme guidance in a way that actually makes sense.
Prevention Is Cheaper Than Disputes
A professional end of tenancy clean removes the biggest single category of deposit deductions — and gives you documented evidence if a dispute arises anyway.