Tenancy Deposit Calculator — Maximum Deposit, Holding Deposit & Penalty

Three different sets of rules, one form. England, Scotland and Wales each cap the tenancy deposit, the holding deposit and the protection deadline differently — and a landlord who protects it late or not at all faces a court- or tribunal-ordered penalty on top of returning the money. This calculator works out the maximum deposit for the rent entered, the holding deposit limit, the date the deposit had to be protected by, and what a court or tribunal could order if it wasn’t — for whichever of the three nations applies.

How the maximum deposit is worked out

Weekly rent is always the monthly rent × 12 ÷ 52 — the same method the Tenant Fees Act 2019 itself uses, because a year has roughly 52.14 weeks, not 48 (12 × 4).

• England. Under the Tenant Fees Act 2019, the cap is 5 weeks’ rent where the annual rent is under £50,000, rising to 6 weeks at or above that threshold. A deposit above the cap is a prohibited payment; the tenant can reclaim the excess.
• Scotland. The Tenancy Deposit Schemes (Scotland) Regulations 2011 set the 30-working-day protection deadline but, on a full read of those Regulations, place no cap on the deposit amount itself. The figure landlords and tenants are told to work to — two months’ rent — comes from Shelter Scotland’s guidance for tenants, not from a numbered provision in the 2011 Regulations.
• Wales. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 is an England-only Act, so its 5/6-week limit was never Welsh law. The Renting Homes (Fees etc.) (Wales) Act 2019 gives Welsh Ministers a power to cap the deposit — but it has not been used, so Wales currently has no statutory maximum on the deposit itself.

Holding deposits are a separate, smaller cap

A holding deposit reserves the property before the tenancy starts; it is not the tenancy deposit. In England and Wales it is capped at one week’s rent (Tenant Fees Act 2019 Sch 1 para 3; Renting Homes (Fees etc.) (Wales) Act 2019 Sch 1 para 5) — anything above that is a prohibited payment. In Scotland, a stand-alone holding deposit has no legal basis at all: section 82 of the Rent (Scotland) Act 1984 bans charging any “premium” — any payment other than rent — as a condition of granting a tenancy, so a payment taken before the tenancy starts is only lawful once it is credited against the actual deposit or rent.

The protect-by deadline and what missing it costs

England and Wales both run on the same clock: 30 days from the date the deposit is received (Housing Act 2004 s.213 in England; the same Act, amended to keep working for Welsh occupation contracts, in Wales). Miss it, and section 214(4) is explicit — the county court must order the landlord to pay the tenant a sum not less than the deposit and not more than three times it, on top of protecting or repaying the deposit itself. Scotland runs a longer, working-day clock — 30 working days under regulation 3 of the 2011 Regulations — and a different forum: the First-tier Tribunal, which under regulation 10 must order up to three times the deposit, with no stated floor.

Where this fits with the rest of the tenancy

Deposit protection sits alongside the other Renters’ Rights Act rules in England — see the full Renters’ Rights Act hub for Form 4A rent increases, the pets process and the written statement of terms. Setting up a new tenancy from scratch? The tenancy agreement generator and the written statement of terms guide cover the paperwork the deposit sits inside. And if a deposit has already gone unprotected past the deadline, the deposit protection penalty page works through the court process in more detail than fits here.

England: Tenant Fees Act 2019 Sch 1 (deposit and holding-deposit caps) and Housing Act 2004 ss.213–214 (protection deadline and penalty), legislation.gov.uk, read 13 Sep 2026. Wales: Renting Homes (Fees etc.) (Wales) Act 2019 Sch 1 (holding deposit) and Housing Act 2004 ss.212–215 as amended for occupation contracts by SI 2022/1166 reg. 28 (protection deadline and penalty), legislation.gov.uk; gov.wales landlord letting-fees guidance (no deposit cap set), read 13 Sep 2026. Scotland: Tenancy Deposit Schemes (Scotland) Regulations 2011, regs 3 and 10, legislation.gov.uk; Shelter Scotland (two-month figure); Rent (Scotland) Act 1984 s.82 (holding-payment ban), read 13 Sep 2026. General information, not advice — a penalty within the court’s or tribunal’s range depends on the facts of the case.