It has just been exposed that Purplebricks will not disclose how many tenants and landlords have been affected by it not registering deposits in government authorised tenancy deposit schemes.

It also refuses point blank to give any information on how long it has kept hold of the deposits before getting round to placing them in tenancy deposit schemes.

Purplebricks’ refusal to answer any media’s questions follows uncovering its failure of an undetermined number of tenants’ deposits that have not or been registered with MyDeposits, Deposit Protection Service and the Tenancy Deposit Scheme.

Purplebricks failure/error could mean landlords being fined if it failed to register tenant’s deposit schemes within the legal 30 days’ timescale, and refuses to comment on whether it has breached the rules.

A statement from the agency to the media says: “Due to the introduction of a new lettings IT system, a small number of tenant deposits were not paid into an authorised deposit scheme. As soon as we identified this issue, we took action and have now registered these deposits. We are currently communicating to the affected landlords and tenants.”