This page will not invent them. What it can do is set out the rules that actually bind a lender, the ones that do not, and the record they will be looking at.

The practical clock is the credit file entry, which runs six years from when the deed began. How long a trust deed stays on your credit file explains where that period comes from and why it is not a legal rule.

Not by law, and not permanently. The Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016 contains no bar on borrowing after a trust deed, and there is no post-discharge restrictions regime for someone who has completed one.

The point most pages miss

No bankruptcy-restrictions regime applies to a protected trust deed. No statutory post-discharge restriction on a discharged trust deed debtor was found anywhere in Part 14.

So once you are discharged, the law imposes nothing on you. Everything after that is a lending decision.

During the deed itself it is a different question

A new mortgage arranged on your own account would be a new debt outside the deed, and mygov.scot’s page on how a trust deed could affect you warns that new creditors are not bound by the deed and that repayments could compromise your contribution.

There is also a separate route for equity, which is not the same thing at all. Can you get credit or borrow money during a trust deed covers the general position.

Where you stand at each stage

There is no legal waiting period at all. The practical marker is the point when the credit file entry reaches the end of the agencies’ retention period, which is six years from the start of the deed.

Why six years from the start is good news

mygov.scot dates the six years from when the trust deed begins rather than from your discharge. On a deed running the usual four years, that means the entry clears roughly two years after you are discharged.

The three agencies do not describe the start point identically, so read your own file rather than counting from a date you were given.

Your discharge date is a fixed, provable point

Under section 184 the trustee applies to AiB on Form 5, and the date of discharge is the date the application is registered. Ask for that in writing and keep it.

Note also that the trust continues after you are discharged, until the trustee obtains their own discharge on Form 6 under section 186. The two dates are not the same and a lender may ask about both.

Assess affordability, and refuse the transaction if it cannot demonstrate the mortgage is affordable. That is a prohibition in the Financial Conduct Authority’s rules rather than a guideline.

The rule, and what has to go into the sum

MCOB 11.6 requires the firm to assess whether you will be able to pay the sums due, and says it must not enter into the transaction unless it can demonstrate that the contract is affordable.

The income counted is income net of income tax and national insurance. Against that go your committed expenditure and, as a minimum, your basic essential expenditure and basic quality-of-living costs.

Council tax is named in the Handbook’s own definition of basic essential expenditure. Evidence of income independent of you is required, and self-certification is prohibited.

Required, forbidden, and simply absent

For borrowing that is not a mortgage the rule is CONC 5.2A, which requires a creditworthiness assessment based on information from you and, where necessary, from a credit reference agency. A credit search is not compulsory in every case even there.

Almost everything you want to know. The Handbook does not tell a lender to search your credit file, does not tell it to read your bank statements, sets no maximum loan-to-income, and says nothing about what to do when it sees a past insolvency.

The definition that is written in English terms

The Financial Conduct Authority defines a credit-impaired customer in three limbs, and read against Scottish facts none of them names what you have been through.

Handle that carefully rather than triumphantly. It does not mean a lender will ignore a protected trust deed, and most will plainly treat it as equivalent.

What it means is that the label is not automatically attached to you by the rulebook. That is a point worth raising if a firm tells you a rule requires an answer it does not.

The rules are being rewritten, so date anything you read

The FCA’s mortgage rule review has been running for over a year. PS25/11 on 2 October 2025 already eased remortgaging to a new lender and term reductions.

CP26/18 opened on 9 June 2026 and closed on 28 July 2026, with a policy statement expected in the second half of 2026, and it proposes changes to the rules on consumers with past credit difficulties. It is a consultation, so nothing in it is a rule yet.

It is part of the estate conveyed to the trustee unless it is excluded, and there are two routes that protect it. Both have to be negotiated rather than granted, and one of them can only be set up before you sign.

The two routes

Every limb of section 166(2) is prefaced with the words before the debtor grants the trust deed, so an exclusion cannot be bolted on afterwards.

There is no three-year rule here

Section 112 reinvests a family home in the debtor after three years in a sequestration. Schedule 4 does not apply it to trust deeds, and it does not apply section 113 either, so a trustee’s interest in your home is not time-limited.

What the Act does not spell out is how a trustee would go about a sale over your objection, and this page is not going to describe a procedure the statute does not set out. Will you lose your home in a trust deed deals with that honestly.

AiB does record that a debtor may refuse consent to the sale of their sole or main residence. What happens to the equity in your home in a trust deed explains how the figure is fixed.

Your heritable estate is conveyed to the trustee, so a remortgage during the deed is something the trustee has to be part of. Where it is used to release equity it normally sits inside a section 175 agreement recorded on Form 1B.

AiB expects the re-mortgaging plan and its timing to be disclosed to creditors. Nothing in the Act sets out a separate rule about it.

What the trustee has to show creditors

The Accountant in Bankruptcy’s guidance expects a trustee to disclose the rationale for not pursuing full equity, any re-mortgaging plan and its timing, the proposed contribution and duration, and a comparison of the dividend from realising the equity against extended contributions.

Valuations should be a current open market valuation on RICS Red Book terms, not a forced sale basis. You are entitled to know how the figure was reached.

Four things to raise with your trustee

• Whether exclusion under section 166 or an agreement under section 175 fits your equity position better.
• How the property has been valued, and on what basis.
• Whether any payments would continue after the 48-month payment period ends, which section 175(2)(b) allows.
• What happens to the arrangement if the property is sold.

Copies of a section 175 agreement go to AiB and to every known creditor, so this is not a private arrangement between you and the trustee.

Fix the record first, then build one. Errors on a credit file after a formal insolvency are common, and a wrongly recorded date can push the problem years further out than it needs to be.

Four checks before you go anywhere near a lender

• Every account included in the deed shows settled or closed rather than an open balance.
• Default dates are right, because a late one extends the retention clock.
• The trust deed entry carries the right start date.
• Any inhibition has been recalled or has expired, which section 184 requires before discharge in any event.

Where something is wrong there is a statutory correction route with three deadlines in it. How to rebuild your credit score after a trust deed sets it out in full.

Bring the paperwork

The trustee’s written confirmation of your discharge, and the registration date, answer the question a lender will ask. Applying without them invites a decision made on incomplete information.

Avoid a cluster of applications. Each hard search leaves a footprint with its own retention period.

If you own a home and have not signed yet

Have the equity conversation before you sign, not afterwards. A Debt Payment Programme under the Debt Arrangement Scheme is not an insolvency solution and does not convey your estate to a trustee, which is why an adviser will usually look at it first for a homeowner.

Citizens Advice Scotland, StepChange and National Debtline all give that advice free. Whether to use a free debt charity or a paid debt adviser covers the choice, and our trust deed page sets out how we help.