# property.deposit-cap

The most a landlord or letting agent in England may take as a tenancy
deposit: five weeks' rent when the annual rent is under £50,000, six weeks'
rent when it is £50,000 or more. Anything above the cap is a prohibited
payment.

`depositCap(money(100000, "GBP"), "monthly", "england", "2026-09-01")` is a
maximum of £1,153.84: £1,000 × 12 = £12,000 a year, under £50,000, so five
weeks, and £12,000 × 5 ÷ 52 = £1,153.846…

## How it is calculated

The Act defines a week's rent as the annual rent divided by 52, and the
government guidance gives the formulae: annual rent is monthly rent × 12 or
weekly rent × 52, and weekly rent is (monthly rent × 12) ÷ 52.

- The threshold test is made on the exact annual rent, so £4,166.66 a month
  (£49,999.92 a year) is five weeks and £4,166.67 (£50,000.04) is six.
- The maximum is annual rent × weeks ÷ 52, computed exactly and **rounded
  down** to the penny once. Rounding the weekly rent first and multiplying by
  five can land a penny or more away; rounding up would put the deposit a
  fraction of a penny over the statutory cap. The Act and guidance do not
  state a rounding rule, so down is the one that can never breach it.
- `weeklyRent` is shown for reference, rounded down too.

Pass the total rent for the property: for a joint tenancy the cap applies to
the rent all the tenants are jointly liable for, not to each tenant.

## Dates and jurisdictions

The rule is a dated row in `data/deposit-caps.json`. England's cap applies to
tenancies granted, renewed or continued on or after 1 June 2019; an earlier
date is refused rather than answered. The Renters' Rights Act 2025 amended
the Tenant Fees Act but left the deposit cap unchanged (statutory guidance
updated 1 May 2026). Wales and Scotland have different regimes and no data
here yet; asking for them is an error, not a guess.

## Sources

- Tenant Fees Act 2019, Schedule 1 paragraph 2 (tenancy deposit; "one
  week's rent" is the annual rent divided by 52):
  https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/4/schedule/1
- Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, "Tenant Fees Act
  2019: Guidance for landlords and agents" (tenancy deposits: the annual and
  weekly rent formulae; the cap applies from 1 June 2019):
  https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5f745d308fa8f5189a93d141/Tenant_Fees_Act_2019_-_Guidance_for_landlords_and_agents.pdf
- "Tenant Fees Act 2019: statutory guidance for enforcement authorities" (as
  amended by the Renters' Rights Act 2025):
  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tenant-fees-act-amended-by-the-renters-rights-act-2025/tenant-fees-act-2019-statutory-guidance-for-enforcement-authorities

1.0.1 fixes Python accepting a trailing newline or non-ASCII digits in onDate; adds tests.