If it wasn’t for twitter I might not have had the nerve to ask TDS about sponsorship.
When we decided to have a conference I knew that we needed to have a sponsor and the first company I thought of was TDS.
But “no” I thought, “they’ll never want to do that!”. As you do. But then there was a DM from their social media contact in my twitter account. “No harm in asking …” I thought as I clicked the reply button. And they said yes!
In fact they seem quite keen on the idea
TDS are delighted to be sponsoring the Landlord Law Conference. We are supporting the event because understanding the law can be daunting for landlords but it is vital for them and their tenants that they do
Michael Morgan, Head of Adjudication, TDS
As you should all know, TDS are one of the three companies authorised by the government to run one of the tenancy deposit schemes in 2007. However they have been involved in tenancy deposit schemes longer than that.
TDS origins
The Dispute Service Ltd was originally set up in 2004 to run a voluntary scheme for ARLA members, and the people behind the company at that time had also been involved in the government pilot project in about 2002.
So it was a ‘no brainer’ for government to choose them when the time came to select companies for the statutory tenancy deposit scheme.
Unlike the other two schemes TDS is a not for profit organisation, and they are very focused on providing service and access to information and resources for their members.
The deposit services
Initially their service was mostly used by agents (and for agent members holding large numbers of deposits their prices are extremely competitive). However last year they teamed up with the Residential Landlords Association (RLA) to develop the Deposit Guard scheme for private landlords.
I spoke to Ben Beadle of TDS and Alan Ward of the RLA at that time about the scheme (which I think is impressive) and you can see the interview >> here.
Award winning
TDS are also a multi award winning company. They won the ‘best suppliers in the industry’ award at the PropertyDrum B2B awards and were a runner up in the Landlord & Letting Show awards.
However more importantly, in April 2012 they were awarded the UK Government’s standard for Customer Excellence. This involves a long tough application process with regular inspections so obtaining the award is a big achievement.
Training
TDS are very active in providing training to their members, and now run a training academy program, which is a successor to the workshops, one of which I attended as their guest last year and reported on >> here.
It is the training aspect of the Landlord Law conference which most attracted TDS. When setting up our conference program I was determined to have talks which would be really informative and which would be given by industry experts.
The conference is an excellent opportunity for landlords to meet and learn from legal experts and help avoid problems later on. Michael Morgan, TDS
So if you want to join Michael and others from TDS as well as all of us from Easy Law Training, you can find out more about the Landlord Law conference and book your place online >> here.