SafeDeposits Scotland Blog

Last Halloween we brought you a round up of the seven creepiest haunted houses in Scotland. Now we're back with more examples of ghostly goings on around the country. Castles and remote mansions featured heavily on our last trip into the spirit world, but as you'll read below things can go bump in the night in even the most pedestrian of surroundings... Edinburgh - Charlotte Square The capital has a reputation as a hotspot for hauntings and while spooky goings on at the likes of...Read More

Did you see the trailer for Mary Poppins Returns, which was released a couple of weeks ago? Pretty magical stuff. And no sooner had we started whistling Chim Chim Cher-ee, we read a startling statistic in relation to chimney sweeping that would have Dick Van Dyke exclaiming "Cor, Blimey!" 89% of respondents to a recent survey of UK tenants conducted by AXA Insurance said it was the tenant's responsibility to keep any chimneys swept. However - contrary to that fairly overwhelming response...Read More

It's probably one of the least popular tasks in maintaining any household but it has to be done, and if you're a keen baker you know how important a clean oven is. Whether you're embarking on a signature, a technical or a showstopper bake, you're not going to get that beautiful baking aroma from an oven caked (no pun intended) in grease. You're maybe wondering why we - a tenancy deposit scheme - are concerned with how your Victoria Sponge works out, but the...Read More

How do I complete the prescribed information form? The Tenancy Deposit Schemes (Scotland) Regulations 2011 require landlords who take a deposit from their tenant to: Transfer the deposit to a government approved tenancy deposit scheme; and Provide the tenant(s) with particular key information. The deposit should be protected and the key information provided within 30 working days of the tenancy start date. To help make providing the key information easier, we have a template,...Read More

The importance of contact details When a landlord registers a deposit, we ask for contact details for the tenant, specifically a phone number (preferably a mobile number) and email address. We can't stress enough how important contact details are: we need to be able to contact the tenant after they move out of the property to ask them to complete the repayment steps. If we can't contact the tenant, the repayment will be much slower for the landlord and tenant. As we need to contact the...Read More

If a landlord and tenant can't agree on how a deposit should be repaid, we offer an independent adjudication service to help. This means we'll ask the landlord and lead tenant for further information about the tenancy. An independent adjudicator will decide what repayment is fair based on that information. The landlord (or letting agent, if one is acting on the landlord's behalf) and lead tenant can provide information through our online evidence portal. We've shared a step-by-step guide...Read More