The Dispute Service has revealed the biggest cause of complaints across all its schemes, with cleaning come out on top. The TDS annual report – representing the 12 months to March 2018 – shows cleaning made up 54% of disputes in its insured scheme and 51% for its custodial option. Its Northern Ireland subsidiary saw 45% of disputes cover cleaning, while the figure was as high as 62% for the SafeDeposits scheme in Scotland. Damage was the second most common complaint across all schemes followed by decoration. The annual report revealed that TDS has seen the number of deposits protected across all its schemes increase by 6.8% annually to 1.48m with a total value of £1.82bn. Most of this, £1.6bn, was in the insured scheme. Growth was highest in Northern Ireland, up 13.85%, followed by Scotland at 8% and England and Wales at 6.52%. The reports showed 1.13% of deposits or 14,430 in the insured scheme had disputes raised, with 0.49% or 200 in the custodial one. In Northern Ireland, 1.05% of deposits or 460 had disputes, rising to 2.94% or 3,530 in Scotland. It does not reveal how many disputes were upheld, rejected, or settled with amounts going to both landlord and tenant. The report also revealed that the TDS is working on a single website for users to access the TDS insured and custodial schemes and is developing software that would allow our users to send and return deposits in ‘real time’ through its own platforms. TDS also provides adjudication for deposit replacement scheme Zero Deposit and said feedback has been positive so far. Steve Harriott, group chief executive of TDS, said: “The growth we have experienced is due to both the increasing size of the private rented sector and the quality of the service we provide to our customers. “Over the past year, we’ve invested significantly in our people, products and customer service. We’re consistently meeting Government targets for call and email answering times across the UK, and were awarded the customer service excellence accreditation earlier this year.” https://www.tenancydepositscheme.com/resources/files/Annual_Review_2017-18.pdf   Story First Published in Property Industry Eye 07/12/18 
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