A new foundation will give grants of up to £20,000 to charities that provide education and training to improve standards of behaviour and practice among landlords and tenants in the private rented housing sector.
The TDS Charitable Foundation will provide education and training resources to tenants, landlords and agents and give grants to projects working towards the same goal.
Applications for funding are now being invited for projects to promote knowledge of landlords' obligations, and projects to raise awareness among tenants of their rights and responsibilities.
It plans to have three funding rounds in 2014/15. The trustees have agreed that in each bidding round they will award grants up to the sum of £35,000 in each of the three bidding rounds. The maximum grant payable in respect of any one bid is £20,000.
In its first series of funding the Foundation will give particular focus to tenants who are renting privately for the first time, and to the growing number of 'accidental landlords' who are letting property owing to circumstance but with little or no awareness of what their obligations are.
The deadline for applying is 30 June.
The private rented sector has grown substantially in recent years and overtook social housing in 2013 to reach four million households in England. However the lettings industry remains largely unregulated. TDS Charitable Foundation trustee Peter Bolton-King, global residential director at RICS, is widely quoted describing the sector as being at risk of becoming "the property industry's wild west".
Steve Harriott (pictured), chief executive of the Dispute Service and a trustee of the Foundation, said: "The TDS Charitable Foundation is providing a valuable new source of funding for organisations which are committed to better standards in private renting.
"At present anyone can enter the lettings industry without training or experience, exposing people to many risks; from bad service to substandard living conditions, to financial loss or worse. I look forward to receiving new and exciting proposals for making tenants aware of what they need to expect from their landlords and agents, and for ways to encourage landlords into training."
The pot of money available is courtesy of the Tenancy Deposit Scheme.
The Tenancy Deposit Scheme is one of three government-approved schemes that accept and hold deposits from tenants that rent their homes from private landlords. It also has a role in adjudicating on disputes that arise between landlords and tenants over the return of deposits at the end of tenancies.
Since the TDS began accepting deposits in 2007, it has been accumulating monies from tenants that cannot be traced to return money to. This can be down to any number of reasons: tenants absconding from properties; international students returning home and not bothering to claim their deposit back, or tenants deciding not to pursue a dispute.
Now that this pot of money has reached a sizeable amount, TDS – itself a not-for-profit company – decided to set up the TDS Charitable Foundation to distribute grants to organisations working to raise awareness of the rights and obligations of all parties in the private rented sector.
