Prescribed information: the deposit protection paperwork that's easy to get wrong

As covered in the broader guide to deposit protection rules, protecting a deposit and serving the tenant with prescribed information are two separate requirements. This post focuses on the second one, because it's longer, more detailed, and — in practice — where most gaps actually turn up when a file is properly reviewed.

What prescribed information actually needs to contain

The prescribed information generally needs to identify the deposit amount, the scheme it's protected with, the landlord's and any letting agent's contact details, how to apply for the deposit's release, and what to do if there's a dispute — the exact required content is set out by the relevant scheme and should be checked against its current published requirements rather than assumed to be a fixed, unchanging list.

Who it needs to be served to

Prescribed information needs to reach every named tenant, not just a single lead tenant on a joint tenancy — a detail that mirrors the same trap in Right to Rent checks, where the temptation is to treat one occupier's paperwork as covering the whole household.

Timing runs alongside protection, not after it

Prescribed information generally needs to be served within the same statutory window as protecting the deposit itself, not treated as a lower-priority follow-up task that can happen once protection is sorted. Doing the two as one combined process, rather than as sequential steps with protection first and prescribed information as an afterthought, is the more reliable way to avoid missing the window on the second part.

• –Confirm the exact required content against your scheme's current published prescribed information requirements
• –Serve it to every named tenant on a joint tenancy, not just one lead occupier
• –Treat protection and prescribed information as one combined process with one deadline, not two sequential ones
• –Keep dated evidence the information actually reached each tenant

Why this is a common finding in file audits

In our experience reviewing tenancy files, deposits themselves are almost always protected correctly — it's the prescribed information step that's more often incomplete, served late, or sent to only one of several joint tenants. It's exactly the kind of gap a proper tenancy file audit is designed to surface before it matters, rather than discovering it only once a deposit dispute is already underway.

Served, but not evidenced

The recurring failure here is not omission but proof. The information was prepared and given to the tenant; what is missing afterwards is any record of exactly what was served, when, and to whom. Months or years later, in a dispute, an assertion that it was provided is considerably weaker than a dated copy of precisely what was sent.

Keeping a copy of the actual document served, with its date and recipient, is a small step that is almost always skipped because at the time it feels redundant — the tenant is standing there receiving it.

Common mistakes

• –No copy retained of exactly what was served
• –No record of the date or the recipient
• –Serving on one tenant in a joint tenancy and not the others
• –Not re-serving where a tenancy changes and the position changes with it
• –Relying on a template without recording which version was used
• –Evidence held in an individual's email rather than the tenancy file