A Debt Payment Programme repays your debts in full and is not an insolvency. The rule everyone quotes is the insolvency rule.

Here is what was actually checked, what you can put right, and the statutory tools for doing it. What happens when a programme ends covers the completion itself.

Nobody publishes a rule for it. Experian, Equifax and TransUnion all publish what they hold and for how long, and none of them lists a Debt Arrangement Scheme at all.

What was checked

Those are the published documents. Experian’s retention periods and Equifax’s retention summary are the two easiest to read for yourself.

TransUnion’s guide and the Information Commissioner’s own consumer guidance are the other two, and the industry-wide Principles of Reciprocity do not mention the scheme either.

Why the figure everyone quotes does not fit

The widely quoted six years is the rule for insolvency entries, and a Debt Arrangement Scheme is not an insolvency. What your creditors report is the state of each account, so ask them and check your own file.

The agencies do publish a retention rule for insolvency data, and that is the rule being borrowed. A Debt Payment Programme is not on any agency’s insolvency list.

The one duration a named source does give

Citizens Advice Scotland says your credit rating will be affected for as long as you are in the programme. That is on its Debt Arrangement Scheme page, and it is a statement about the period during, not after.

So the honest answer to the question in this heading is that there is no published rule, and your own file is the only place the answer exists.

Two things, and they are different in kind. There is the way each creditor reported each account, and there is the DAS Register entry, which is a legal register rather than a credit file.

The account-level record

Nothing published says how a Debt Payment Programme itself is reported. What is published is how arrangements generally appear.

TransUnion’s own status codes include Arrangement to pay in force, and the industry Principles of Reciprocity treat arrangements and their relevant dates as shared data. Neither names the Debt Arrangement Scheme.

So the account entries in your own programme are the thing to read. No source will tell you in advance what they will say.

The Accountant in Bankruptcy adds one case of its own: a debt completed by composition is recorded with the agencies as partially settled. Paying a programme off early explains why composition is rare.

The register, and the one sourced link to a credit file

National Debtline’s Scottish guide says the credit reference agencies check the DAS Register regularly and may update your credit file to reflect that information.

That is a may, and it is the only published statement connecting the two. What the DAS Register holds covers the entry and when it comes off.

Where a credit file gets its insolvency data

The three agencies name the suppliers themselves, in the jointly published Credit Reference Agency Information Notice, version 1.2, adopted 2 December 2024. Insolvency data comes from the Insolvency Service, the Accountant in Bankruptcy, The Stationery Office and the Gazettes.

That list is worth reading against your own file. A Debt Payment Programme is not on it, and the Accountant in Bankruptcy appears there only as a source of insolvency data.

A Debt Payment Programme is not an insolvency solution. You repay the debt in full, and what changes is the pressure rather than the balance.

Get your file from all three agencies and read it against the notice of completion. That is the one step nothing else works without.

Getting the file

All three agencies provide a free statutory report. You do not need to buy a subscription and you do not need to pay anyone to obtain it for you.

The right of access sits in section 158 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 and in the data protection rules. In practice it is exercised free.

What to check, account by account

• That every account in the programme appears, and that the balance shown matches what you were told.
• That the account status is what your creditor said it would be.
• That there are no duplicates, which happen where a debt was sold during the programme.
• That your address history and the spelling of your name are right.

Do this at all three agencies rather than one. They hold different data, because creditors do not all report to all three.

There is a statutory route, and it has teeth. Section 159 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 lets you require an agency to remove or amend an entry you consider incorrect and likely to prejudice you.

The statutory tools

The whole sequence is in section 159, and the periods are 28 days at each stage.

The notice of correction is the part nobody mentions

Where the agency will not remove or amend the entry, you can require it to add a notice of correction of not more than 200 words. It sits on the file with the entry.

If the agency does not comply, the same section routes the matter to the relevant authority, which in the ordinary case is the Information Commissioner.

Use it for the right thing

It is for entries that are wrong or that need explaining. It is not a way of removing an accurate record, and no firm can lawfully do that either.

More than most pages suggest on the accuracy side, and nothing at all on the accuracy of a true entry. Sorting the first group out is the whole of the useful work.

Fixable and not fixable

Work down the list once, in writing, and keep the replies. That is a slower job than a subscription service but it is the one that changes the file.

The electoral register, and why it is not folklore in Scotland

Registering to vote is usually offered as a tip. In Scotland it is a statutory data flow: regulation 113 of the Representation of the People (Scotland) Regulations 2001 is headed sale of the full register to credit reference agencies.

It lets a registration officer supply the full register to a firm providing credit reference services, on request and for a fee. Regulation 113(3) restricts what that firm may use it for.

One of those permitted purposes is vetting applications for credit. So being on the register at your current address is a matter of the data being there to match against.

Because taking credit is restricted while a programme runs. That is a standard condition of every programme rather than a matter of what lenders decide.

The restriction, and the exceptions

Regulation 27(2)(e) makes it a standard condition not to apply for or obtain credit beyond what regulation 33(1)(b) permits, or beyond an approved variation.

An individual may take credit up to £2,000 without a variation, but not where they already owe £1,000 or more outside the programme, disregarding excluded rent and mortgage arrears on their home.

What that means for the rebuild

For most people it means several years with no new accounts being opened and reported. That is an absence of new information rather than a negative entry.

The restriction ends with the programme. The disadvantages of a Debt Arrangement Scheme sets out what you were living with while it ran.

The comparison worth keeping in mind

A Debt Arrangement Scheme writes off none of the money you owe. Interest, fees, penalties and charges stop, so the balance stops growing, but the principal is repaid to the last penny.

You finish having repaid everyone in full, which is a different position from any insolvency route. Whether the scheme writes off any of your debt and the scheme against a trust deed set out the difference.

That depends on the lender, and no source we would rely on establishes any lender’s criteria. What we can tell you is what the rules require of them and what your file will show.

What we are not going to invent

You will find pages giving a deposit percentage, a waiting period and a description of which lenders will look at you. None of that is sourced to any lender or any rule.

A hedged version of an unsourced claim is still unsourced. So this page does not carry one.

What is fixed

Affordability rules govern how a mortgage lender assesses you, and getting a mortgage while you are in a programme goes through what they require and what they do not.

The practical answer for someone who has just finished is the same as the rest of this page. Get the file, correct what is wrong, and take real figures to a broker or a lender.

And one thing to stop worrying about

A Debt Payment Programme is not insolvency, so the restrictions that follow a sequestration never applied to you. Whether a programme affects your job sets out that difference, and our Debt Arrangement Scheme page explains how we help.