So what follows is the part that is checkable. The records, the clocks, the statutory rights, and the errors that cost people years.

The trust deed entry itself runs for six years from when the deed began, and how long a trust deed stays on your credit file explains where that period comes from.

Less than you might think, and something different from what you expect. Your file is a record of what other organisations have reported about you, not a verdict, and the useful question is which of those organisations reported what.

Who puts what on there

That list comes from the agencies’ own joint transparency notice, CRAIN, which publishes where their data comes from.

The bottom row surprises people

Council tax arrears and a wage arrestment never reached your file, because no mechanism exists to put them there. How to rebuild your credit after council tax arrears deals with that separately.

What did reach the file is the knock-on damage. A direct debit on a credit account that failed while money was being taken at source is reported by the lender, and that is a real entry with a real clock.

Six years is the figure every Scottish source gives, dated by mygov.scot from when the deed begins. On a four-year deed that means it usually clears around two years after your discharge.

No law sets that period

It is credit reference agency retention practice. Experian publishes six years from the start date or the stated end date, whichever is latest, then a further five years for profiling and statistical analysis.

Equifax dates six years for a discharged record from the court date, and TransUnion holds insolvency data for ten years and uses the most recent six.

They are not describing the same rule. That is why the answer is to read your own file rather than to trust a date from a website, including this one.

The register is a different record

The Register of Insolvencies entry comes off about a year after the deed completes on AiB’s stated practice, which is nothing to do with the six years. Whether your trust deed appears on the Register of Insolvencies sets out the difference.

Get the paperwork, then get the data. Your discharge date is the date AiB registered your trustee’s application under section 184, and that date is what everything else is measured against.

The discharge letter is worth asking for

Your trustee must notify you and all known creditors within 7 days of AiB confirming the discharge has been registered. The Accountant in Bankruptcy’s guidance also accepts that a trustee may charge a reasonable fee for a discharge letter, equivalent to their standard letter fee.

Keep it. It is the document that answers the question a lender will ask, and section 184 is what gives the date its authority.

Six checks, in order

Getting the files

Section 158 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 gives a statutory right to a copy of your file, together with a statement of your rights, and makes contravention an offence.

In practice you should not need to pay. All three agencies provide a free statutory report, and access is normally exercised under the data protection right of access instead.

There is a statutory route with three deadlines in it. Section 159 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 lets you require an agency to remove or amend an incorrect entry, and then to add a notice of correction of up to 200 words.

The machinery, step by step

That is section 159 in full, and the notice of correction is the part worth knowing about. It sits on the file and is shown alongside the entry you disputed.

Raise it in two places at once

Go to the agency showing the error and to the lender that supplied the data. The agency holds the record, but the lender is usually the one that has to change it.

• Name the account, the lender and what the report currently says.
• Say what it should say, and why.
• Attach the trustee’s discharge confirmation and, if you have it, the statement of realisation and distribution.
• Keep dates and copies of everything you send.

The backstop

The relevant authority under section 159 is the Information Commissioner in the ordinary case, and failing to comply with its order is an offence.

A wrongly recorded default date is the single most expensive error to leave alone. It pushes the six-year clock out from a date that was never right.

In Scotland it is a statutory data flow rather than folklore. Regulation 113 of the Representation of the People (Scotland) Regulations 2001 is headed sale of full register to credit reference agencies, and it sets out exactly how the roll reaches them.

What the regulation allows

Regulation 113 lets a registration officer supply the full register, on request and on payment of a fee, to a person with Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 permission who provides credit reference services.

Regulation 113(3) restricts the use to three purposes, the first of which is vetting applications for credit. Regulation 113(4) lets the officer demand evidence that the applicant really does provide credit reference services.

So being on the roll at your current address is not a superstition. It is how an agency confirms you are where you say you are.

The other thing worth doing at the same time

Check your address history is right across all three files. A gap or a wrong address does the same damage as a missing electoral roll entry, and it is fixed the same way.

Accurate data and time. Beyond that, no lender’s criteria are on the public record, and this page is not going to invent them.

What is verifiable

• The trust deed entry has a fixed retention period on each agency’s own published schedule, and none of the three is identical.
• Payment data on live credit accounts is reported by the lenders themselves, so the record you build from here is made by how those accounts run.
• Hard search footprints have their own retention, from one to two years for live decisions depending on the agency.

That is the whole of what the published documents establish. How long debt information stays on your credit file sets out the periods for everything else.

What is not on the public record at all

No agency publishes its scoring model. No lender publishes its criteria for someone who has completed a formal insolvency, and neither the Financial Conduct Authority’s rules nor the Information Commissioner’s guidance sets one.

So a page telling you how many months of clean history a lender wants is guessing. Getting a mortgage after a trust deed deals with the borrowing question on the same honest basis.

The one habit that is not about credit at all

A small savings buffer stops the next unexpected bill turning into new borrowing. It is the one thing on this page that does not depend on what any lender decides.

Building it is a budgeting exercise rather than a credit one. How to build a budget when money is taken from your wages covers the method.

Anything sold on the promise of removing a true entry. Nothing lawful removes a correctly recorded trust deed before the agencies’ retention period ends, whatever the advertising says.

Three specific traps

• Credit repair firms charging to remove accurate information. You can correct inaccurate data yourself, free, under section 159.
• Applying widely to find out where you stand. Each hard search leaves a footprint with its own retention period.
• New borrowing before the budget can absorb a bad month. That is the pattern that produced the trust deed.

If the debts start building again

You cannot apply for a Debt Payment Programme while a trust deed subsists, but that restriction ends when the deed terminates. Does a Debt Arrangement Scheme show on your credit file covers what that route does to the record.

Free budgeting and debt help is available after discharge as well as before it. Whether to use a free debt charity or a paid debt adviser covers that choice, and our trust deed page sets out how we help.