Deposit Protection Service > Claims and disputes > The dispute resolution process
When you submit a claim, we contact your tenants and ask them if they agree with the deductions you’ve requested. If they confirm they’re happy with your claim, we’ll pay the deposit as you’ve requested within two business days.
However, if they disagree with your claim, and you can’t agree on a value with your tenant, our free Dispute Resolution Service can help resolve your dispute.
The dispute resolution process differs depending on if we’re protecting the deposit in a Custodial or Insured deposit protection scheme.
For our Custodial scheme, where we hold the deposit:
- We request evidence
- The landlord and tenant submit their evidence
- An adjudicator reviews the evidence and issues their decision
- We repay the deposit as instructed by the adjudicator
For our Insured scheme, where the landlord/letting agent holds the deposit:
- The landlord sends the disputed deposit amount to us
- We request evidence
- The landlord and tenant submit their evidence
- An adjudicator reviews the evidence and issues their decision
- We repay the deposit as instructed by the adjudicator
How the process works
Gather your evidence
Evidence gathered at the start of the tenancy is as important as evidence gathered at the end of it. The deposit belongs to the tenant until the landlord provides sufficient evidence to justify a claim, so the onus is on you to prove you have a legitimate claim to a share of it.
At a minimum, landlords should provide a signed tenancy agreement showing the terms of the tenancy, and for a claim that relates to the condition of the property, signed check-in and check-out inventory reports.
Other evidence that should be provided can vary depending on the type of claim. Examples include:
- Signed reports of periodic inspections of the property
- Copies of any communications between landlord and tenant (e.g. emails, texts and letters)
- Invoices, estimates, receipts and/or quotes
- Statement of the rent account or bank statements
- Date-stamped photographs or video recordings
- Witness statements
Read our in depth look at different types of claims and the evidence that may support them.
Submit your evidence
We'll email you when it's time to submit your evidence. You then have 14 calendar days from the date of that email to submit your evidence.
You can view your evidence submission deadline date and a summary of the disputed deductions on the 'Your evidence' page.
Submit your evidence through your online account using our upload service. You can submit up to 40mb of files per upload and as many uploads as you need for each dispute, as long as they're submitted within the 14-day window.
To upload your evidence
Step 1: Log in
Log in to your DPS account, open the 'View tenancies' page and click 'Submit evidence'.
Step 2: Upload evidence
Click 'Upload evidence' and select the files you want to submit.
Step 3: Add additional information
In the ‘Additional information to support your claim’ section, add any extra information about your claim you didn’t include when recording your deductions reasons. The field is limited to 1,000 characters. If you need to provide more information, please create a separate document (e.g. .doc or .txt) and upload this with your evidence.
Step 4: Confirm and submit
Check you're happy with the evidence you're uploading – you can delete evidence at this point, but not after you've submitted it. When you're satisfied with the files you've added, click 'Submit'.
Step 5: Repeat as needed
If you've more than 40mb of evidence to submit, repeat steps 2-4.
If you've no evidence to submit, tick the box to confirm this and click 'Submit'. You can add an explanation why you've no evidence to submit in the 'Additional information to support your claim' section.
Lastly, you must confirm you haven't included any illegal or offensive imagery in your evidence, accept the legal disclaimer and confirm you're not a robot.
Acceptable file types
You can upload the following file formats:
- Documents: .doc, .docx, .txt, .rtf, .pdf, .xls, .xlsx, .csv, .msg
- Images: .jpg, .png, .gif
- Videos: .asf, .wmv, .avi, .mpg, .mov, .mp4
What happens next?
Once the evidence submission window has closed, the dispute and any evidence you and the tenant have submitted is passed to an adjudicator.