What decides an application is those accounts. That is where honest guidance ends and most of the pages on this subject carry on regardless.

Nothing published anywhere establishes what any individual lender does about a debt management plan. This page says what is on the record, then says what is not, and stops.

No. A debt management plan is an informal arrangement with no legal effect on anything else you do, including borrowing.

Why there is nothing to disclose to a register

The Financial Conduct Authority’s own glossary calls a plan a non-statutory agreement, and no register in Scotland records one.

Sequestration, a protected trust deed and a debt payment programme all appear on public registers. A plan appears on none of them.

Your own contract may say something

What is binding is your contract with the provider, not the plan itself. The creditors are not parties to it.

Nothing in law restricts credit while a plan runs, and nothing prescribes what a provider’s contract may say about it. Read the contract you signed, which CONC 8.4.1, a rule, requires you to have in writing.

Applying honestly is the only part that is fixed

A mortgage application asks about your commitments, and the payments you are making are commitments. Answering accurately is not optional.

Your credit file, and on it the state of each account rather than the arrangement. The plan is not an entry anywhere.

Entry by entry

Experian says a plan will not be recorded as a separate entry on your report, that creditors should add a plan flag to the account entries, and that a default may be recorded even where the creditor agreed the plan.

A lower score is the ordinary outcome

Experian says a plan will usually lower your credit score, because you are paying less than the amount originally agreed and that is what gets reported.

That is the mechanism rather than a judgement. Whether a plan affects your credit score goes through everything that is recorded.

Which markers you get is not in your control

Each creditor decides for itself whether to record an arrangement marker or a default, and two people with identical plans can end up with different files. Whether defaults are added during a plan covers that decision.

Assess whether you can afford the payments. The rules set the framework and say nothing at all about debt management plans.

What the affordability rules do and do not say

The affordability requirements sit in MCOB 11.6 of the Handbook, and they are about whether the borrowing is affordable rather than about any particular product you are using.

The gap is the whole point

Nothing in MCOB 11.6 tells a lender what to do when it sees reduced payments, an arrangement marker or a default, and no maximum loan to income appears in it.

That space is filled by each lender’s own policy, which is not published. It is why no honest page can tell you the answer in advance.

The regulator’s label is written in English legal terms

The Handbook’s definition of a credit-impaired customer does not name council tax arrears, a wage arrestment, a Scottish decree, sequestration or a protected trust deed, and the affordability rules are drafted around it.

That does not mean a lender will ignore any of them. It means the label is not automatically attached to you by the rulebook.

Because none of it is published. Lending criteria are commercial policy and no public source sets them out.

What is genuinely not established

• Any lender’s minimum income, scorecard or maximum loan to income.
• What any lender does when it sees an arrangement marker or a default.
• Whether any lender asks for bank statements, or what it looks for on them.
• How long any lender wants a plan to have been finished before it will lend.

An absence is a finding, not a gap in the research

The sources were checked and none of it is there. Saying so is more use to you than a confident number nobody can stand behind.

A broker may know from experience what a particular lender has done before. That is worth asking about, and it is not the same as a published criterion.

Why the pages ranking for this say otherwise

Many of the pages ranking for this query are broker sites, and a confident number is better for collecting enquiries than an honest absence.

Treat any page giving you a percentage, a deposit figure or a waiting period as marketing rather than information. Ask the source for it and there will not be one.

A broker is not a substitute for a source

A whole of market broker sees more decisions than you will. That is experience rather than a published criterion, and it should be described as such.

What you can do instead of guessing

• Get all three credit reports and read them before anyone else does.
• Correct anything recorded wrongly, and get the dates fixed.
• Ask a lender or a broker for a decision in principle rather than a full application.
• Ask what evidence will be needed before you commit to anything.

Not by the plan. Your mortgage sits outside the arrangement, and the payments carry on exactly as before.

Secured debt is not plan debt

A plan deals with unsecured balances such as cards, loans, overdrafts and catalogues. Which debts can go in a plan sets out the boundary.

In Scotland the lender’s security over your home is a standard security under the Conveyancing and Feudal Reform (Scotland) Act 1970, which is a different instrument from an English mortgage deed.

Mortgage arrears are a priority debt

Falling behind on the mortgage puts the house at risk in a way that a credit card does not. The mortgage payment comes before the plan payment, not after it.

A budget that leaves the mortgage short is the wrong budget. Tell your provider before it happens rather than afterwards.

Tell the lender before you fall behind, not after

Mortgage arrears are dealt with under a different part of the Financial Conduct Authority’s rulebook from the credit debts in your plan. That part was not examined for this guide, so we are not going to tell you what it requires of your lender.

What is certain is that telling the lender early is worth more than any rule we could quote at you. A lender that knows what is happening has more options in front of it than one that finds out from a missed payment.

What happens at the end of the fixed rate is not published either

What a lender offers an existing borrower when a deal ends is that lender’s own policy. No public source records what any of them do.

Six years is the period the agencies use for lending decisions, and the sources disagree on when the six years starts.

The two framings, which do not reconcile

Experian publishes its own retention schedule separately from its consumer guidance, and how long debt information stays on your credit file sets out what each agency holds.

Nothing in law sets the six years

No statute, statutory instrument or Financial Conduct Authority rule sets it, and the Information Commissioner’s Office reports it to the public without citing a legal source for the period.

What does set it is industry agreement through the Principles of Reciprocity, which the Credit Information Governance Body has run since 31 May 2026 in place of the Steering Committee on Reciprocity. That is a self-regulatory body rather than a regulator, and the Principles are not published openly.

Each entry runs its own clock

A default recorded early in a long plan can drop off before the plan finishes, and one recorded late outlives it by years. What happens when a plan ends covers the paperwork at the finish.

Credit reporting is the same across the United Kingdom. What differs is the enforcement behind it and the alternatives available to you.

What a Scottish creditor does instead

A decree rather than a county court judgment, and diligence served by sheriff officers rather than bailiffs. Whether creditors can still take court action sets out the sequence.

A plan does nothing to hold any of that back, and whether a plan stops a wage arrestment is the page for the wages side.

The statutory alternatives affect a mortgage differently

A trust deed puts the equity in your home in issue and a plan does not, which whether a plan or a trust deed suits a homeowner sets out.

Borrowing during a debt payment programme is restricted by the regulations rather than by policy, and getting a mortgage in a Debt Arrangement Scheme deals with that.

And afterwards

Recovery is gradual whichever route you take, because each entry expires on its own date. Getting a mortgage after a trust deed covers the formal side, and free advice on the whole picture is available from Citizens Advice Scotland, StepChange, National Debtline and Advice Direct Scotland.