Today, it is announced that the Deposit Protection Service has won a renewed contract from the Government to run an authorised tenancy deposit protection service.

The news was by no means a foregone conclusion for the scheme – which had to submit its tender back in April.

However, it has been greeted with particular pleasure by its boss, Julian Foster, who took over the reins earlier this year.

He succeeded Kevin Firth, who was the DPS’s managing director from the outset and who even before then played a role at the forefront of the then government’s deposit protection strategy.

The DPS was, and is, the only custodial deposit scheme in England and Wales (although that will change next year when TDS and MyDeposits will run two new custodial schemes) and is part of the global giant, Australia-headquartered Computershare.

Foster had worked for Computershare, based in Bristol, since 2010.

Starting his new role as managing director of business services in February, he somehow managed also to hold on to his previous roles as managing director of Computershare’s childcare voucher services and salary extras businesses.

Foster says, however, that at least 60% of his time is spent on the DPS, where his role covers not just England and Wales, but the Letting Protection Service Scotland and the Letting Protection Service Northern Ireland.

In Scotland, only custodial schemes are authorised. This is as opposed to insurance-backed ones which enable agents and landlords physically to hang on to the deposits themselves – with the occasional but all-too predictable consequence that the money vanishes into the sunset.

Many people regard the custodial scheme as inherently much safer, but complain that it is slow to return tenants’ money.

Not so, says Foster. “Repayments take an average of two days, well under the government target of ten, where there is no dispute or the amounts have been settled.

“It is one of the things I have been very much focused on.”

However, the DPS also launched its own insurance-backed scheme. “Yes we did,” says Foster. “However, our custodial scheme currently has 1.26m deposits, compared with the 25,000 protected by our insurance scheme.”

He counters claims by the Tenancy Deposit Scheme that it is the largest of the schemes, saying that it might be in financial terms, but not by volume.

“We hold 60,000 more deposits,” he says.

He also pours cold water on the claim that TDS is the only scheme that allows agents, landlords and tenants to raise disputes: the custodial scheme allows all parties to raise a claim as well.

That is no mean feat given that the DPS, uniquely, is not backed by the kind of deals and relationships that the other two schemes enjoy.

TDS, for example, was launched by ARLA and subsequently attracted the backing of other industry bodies including the RICS. TDS also has a close working relationship with the Residential Landlords Association.

MyDeposits was launched by the National Landlords Association in association with commercial insurance firm Hamilton Fraser.

Foster is actively planning future improvements. These will include issuing regular performance data – something which TDS is particularly good at – and also reviewing its user-friendliness.

“We don’t want to hide behind terms and conditions and legalese,” he says.

When DPS was originally set up, it was meant to run itself on the interest from banked deposit money – underwritten, if necessary, by taxpayers.

It was never expected, back in 2007 when deposit protection became mandatory, that interest rates would fall to historic lows. In 2011, it emerged that the DPS was likely to cost taxpayers £30m to “bail it out” under the terms of the contract.

Then housing minister Grant Shapps revealed that a new revised agreement had been drawn up the previous year, removing the guarantee, but incorporating a payment of £12.7m.

It was also revealed that the DPS’s original contract – which had been due for renewal – had been extended for another four years.

Today, Foster openly admits: “With on-going low interest rates, it has been challenging for the business, requiring us to innovate and become more efficient.”

So, this is the first time that the DPS has had to re-tender in its eight years of existence.

That it has done so successfully means that Foster, below, has set fresh targets for the business: “I would like to think that we will show even more empathy to our customers, that we can win a greater share of the market, and the things we already do well, we will do better.”