Squabbling with the landlord over the deposit is a rite of passage familiar to every student living in digs.

As of today, however, landlords have effectively lost control of tenants’ deposits and face hefty fines for non-compliance with new legislation. The new rules apply as much to the casual landlord who lets an old flat to a friend as to the professionals with a lucrative portfolio of rental properties, so long as they sign an “assured shorthold tenancy” agreement, which accounts for the vast majority of tenancies where rental income is under £25,000 per year.

Any landlord who fails to join one of three schemes — the Deposit Protection Service, the Tenancy Deposit Solution, or the Tenancy Deposit Scheme — will forfeit his eviction rights and may be forced to pay tenants a fine of three times the deposit amount.

Professional bodies may have informed their members of the new law, but fewer than half (48 per cent) of properties are rented through a letting agent, and only a handful of 870,000 private landlords in England and Wales belong to any professional organisation.

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