Petition Landlords to pay penalties for abuse of the deposit protection service (DPS)

Stop Landlords abusing the Deposit Protection Service

While the DPS is a step in the right direction, it is still loaded in favour of landlords.

The problem: Landlords face no penalties for creating spurious claims for deductions from a tenant's rental deposit.

The required modification is small and simple, changing only one step in the DPS system. Everything else remains the same:

If all or part of a landlord's claim is rejected by the DPS and is deemed to be without basis (so not when the outcome could have gone either way), they should face a penalty.

To avoid costly interpretation and adjudication, I propose that the penalty should be an amount equal to that of the fabricated claim.

A proposed secondary change would be to keep all such penalties on file and available for prospective tenants to view ahead of taking up a new tenancy.