Does A Debt Arrangement Scheme Show On Your Credit File?

There is also an honest gap, and pages that fill it are guessing. No source publishes how long a programme stays on a credit file, and how long debt information stays on your credit file explains why nobody sets that period by law in the first place.

Here is what is recorded, by whom, and how it compares with the insolvency routes.

What is the DAS Register and who can look at it?

It is the statutory register of debt payment programmes, created by regulations 18 and 19 of the Debt Arrangement Scheme (Scotland) Regulations 2011. The Accountant in Bankruptcy operates it as a free public register with an online search.

The regulations are shorter than people assume

Part 4 of the 2011 Regulations contains exactly two regulations. Regulation 18 creates the register and requires the DAS Administrator to maintain it, and regulation 19 says what goes on it.

The enabling power is section 7(2)(v) of the Debt Arrangement and Attachment (Scotland) Act 2002. Section 7(2)(x) also permits regulations about how register information is made available to the public.

A point worth being precise about

The 2011 Regulations do not actually contain a provision making the register public. The Accountant in Bankruptcy nonetheless operates it as one, describing it as an online public register with a free search facility.

So the accurate statement is that AiB runs it as a free public register, rather than that the regulations require it. The practical effect for you is the same.

What goes on it

There is a sensitivity exception. AiB may withhold information where including it would be likely to put a person at risk of violence or otherwise jeopardise their safety or welfare.

How does a programme reach a credit file at all?

Through your creditors. The lenders inside a programme are themselves data contributors, and they report the status of their own accounts as a matter of course.

The register and the credit file, side by side

What is certain, and what is inference

The certain part is the account-level route. A creditor whose account is being paid through a programme will report it, as an arrangement, as being in default, or both.

The less certain part is whether the register itself is fed to the agencies. Their own published source notice names the Accountant in Bankruptcy as a supplier of insolvency data, and a debt payment programme is not an insolvency.

National Debtline says credit reference agencies check the DAS Register regularly and may update a credit file to reflect it. That is an advice body’s account of practice rather than a documented data feed, and it is worth reading as such.

What that means for an account that never defaulted

Even where an account was up to date, the payment history against it changes shape for the life of the programme. Whether a wage arrestment affects your credit score is the reverse case, where nothing changes at all.

AiB does say one thing about the end of a programme. Debts completed by composition are recorded with the credit reference agencies as partially settled.

How long does it stay on your credit file?

Nobody publishes an answer, and this page will not invent one. The widely quoted six years is unsourced for the Debt Arrangement Scheme specifically.

Why the six years does not transfer

Six years is not a legal period at all. It is industry practice, and the three agencies’ own published retention schedules do not agree with each other, which is set out at how long debt information stays on your credit file.

Two of the three agencies do not list a Debt Arrangement Scheme line separately, and both treat trust deeds and programmes under their insolvency heading. A programme is not an insolvency, so reading that period across is a guess.

What you can do about the uncertainty

• Ask your money adviser what your own creditors have said they will report, in writing.
• Ask the Accountant in Bankruptcy about your register entry rather than assuming a period.
• Pull your file from each of the three agencies during the programme and again after it, so you can see what is actually recorded.

The register has no published retention period either. AiB’s own DAS Register page says information is removed in accordance with its retention and destruction policy, and its creditor guidance says details are removed on completion.

Neither the regulations nor that policy puts a timescale on it. How long a Debt Payment Programme lasts covers the programme’s own length.

How does that compare with a trust deed or sequestration?

Those two are certain in both directions, with a documented mechanism. Both are on the Register of Insolvencies by statute, and the Accountant in Bankruptcy runs a daily data download from it which the main credit reference agencies subscribe to.

The three routes side by side

Section 200(2) of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016 puts sequestrated estates and trust deeds sent to AiB for registration on the register, and section 200(7) requires AiB to make it available for inspection. What a protected trust deed is and what sequestration in Scotland is cover both.

The two periods that are not connected

The Register of Insolvencies holds an entry for the longer of one year after the trustee’s discharge, one year after recall, or one year after any bankruptcy restrictions period ends. The credit reference agencies keep an insolvency for six years.

Those are unrelated periods and neither sets the other. A page telling you an insolvency stays on your credit file for six years because that is how long it is on the register is simply wrong.

Does a statutory moratorium show anywhere?

Yes, and on two registers rather than one. Section 195(3) of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016 requires the Accountant in Bankruptcy to enter the notice in the register of insolvencies and in the DAS Register.

A consequence that is rarely mentioned

So someone taking six months of protection appears on two free public registers for the duration. How a statutory moratorium protects you sets out what those six months buy.

That is not a reason to avoid one. It is a reason to know about it before the notice goes in, rather than afterwards.

And what it does not do

It does not stop an earnings arrestment that was already running. Section 197(5)(d) of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016 lets a creditor carry on executing an earnings arrestment, a current maintenance arrestment or a conjoined arrestment order that came into effect before the moratorium began.

Can you get credit while a programme is running?

Only within narrow limits, and taking new borrowing outside them puts the programme itself at risk. Regulation 27(2)(e) makes it a standard condition not to obtain credit beyond what regulation 33(1)(b) permits.

What is permitted

• Credit approved by a variation of the programme.
• Further credit under a cyclical arrangement already running at approval, where your payment does not vary.
• Trade credit in the ordinary course of business.
• Credit for an emergency repair, or for reasonable funeral expenses for an immediate family member. Both require written notice of the programme to the lender.

What a lender will be able to see

Creditors inside a programme report their own accounts, so an arrangement or default marker will be visible to anyone you apply to. What a lender does about it is that lender’s own decision.

A basic bank account remains available whatever your credit record, because there is no lending involved and the grounds of refusal are a closed statutory list.

Whether a wage arrestment affects your ability to get a bank account sets out that right in full, and can you get a mortgage with a wage arrestment deals with borrowing to buy a home.

Is the credit file effect a reason to avoid a programme?

Rarely on its own. Compare it with what is happening now, because an earnings arrestment leaves no mark at all and can take money from every payday for years.

What a programme gives you

Approval operates as a recall of any arrestment of your income or property under regulation 33(1)(a), and AiB sends the notice. Whether a Debt Arrangement Scheme stops a wage arrestment goes through it.

• Interest, fees and charges are frozen from the date the application is recorded, and written off on completion.
• Creditors cannot serve a charge for payment, commence or execute diligence, or found on the debt in a sequestration petition.
• Council tax arrears can be included, although the current year’s bill cannot. Can council tax arrears go into a Debt Arrangement Scheme covers that.
• The scheme’s fees come out of creditor recoveries, so nothing is charged to you on top of your monthly payment.

What it cannot cover

Student loans and court fines are excluded, and only the arrears on a hire purchase or conditional sale agreement can go in. Ongoing liabilities, including this year’s council tax, have to be paid alongside the programme.

The comparison that actually matters

Weigh the register entry against the years of deductions it replaces, not against a clean file you do not currently have. Do you have to be insolvent to use the Debt Arrangement Scheme sets out what the scheme asks of you, and our Debt Arrangement Scheme page explains how we help.

A free session with a money adviser will put real numbers on both sides. That is a better basis for the decision than a figure nobody can source.