There are also two separate records and they are routinely merged into one. The Register of Insolvencies is public and statutory; your credit file is private and commercial.

Nothing below tells you what a lender will do afterwards. No official Scottish source publishes lending criteria or a waiting period, and any page that gives you one is guessing.

Six years for live lending decisions, and the agencies do not all say it the same way. Experian gives six years from the start date or the stated end date, whichever is later.

The three schedules, in their own words

Equifax measures a discharged record from the court date, and TransUnion holds ten years and uses six.

So the honest sentence is that six years is what the industry uses to decide whether to lend to you, not the point at which the data is deleted. The extra years are for profiling and statistical work.

Why the start date matters more than the discharge date

Experian’s wording measures from the start of the insolvency, with the end date only displacing it if it falls later. A twelve-month discharge therefore sits inside the six years rather than ending them.

Equifax’s undischarged wording pulls the other way, keeping the record at least six years or until discharge if that is later. How long sequestration lasts sets out the discharge clock itself.

None does. The only legal control is the storage limitation principle in Article 5(1)(e) of the UK GDPR, which is a principle rather than a period.

What actually sets it

The industry agreement is the Principles of Reciprocity, and since 31 May 2026 they have been run by the Credit Information Governance Body rather than by the Steering Committee on Reciprocity.

Any page still explaining the six years by reference to SCOR is out of date. That body ceased to operate on 31 May 2026.

The regulator has never set it either

The Information Commissioner’s Office reports the six years in its consumer material and cites no legal source for it.

The joint industry notice says the same in its own way. The Credit Reference Agency Information Notice, in the version adopted on 2 December 2024, says each agency may retain data for different periods of time.

How long debt information stays on a credit file deals with the wider question across every kind of entry.

Through the public register. Section 200 of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016 requires the Register of Insolvencies to hold sequestrations, and the agencies take insolvency data from the Accountant in Bankruptcy.

The chain, and it is checkable at both ends

The Accountant in Bankruptcy runs a commercial data download from the register, and the main credit reference agencies subscribe to it. The joint industry notice names the Accountant in Bankruptcy among its sources of insolvency data.

So the entry does not depend on any single creditor reporting it. Whether your sequestration is public sets out what the register itself holds.

What the register entry actually contains

The Accountant in Bankruptcy publishes a defined set of fields, including your name, address, date of birth and the level of debt at the date of bankruptcy. That is a fuller record than most people expect.

It is also the reason the data reaches the agencies without any creditor doing anything. The register is the source and the download is the route.

Your own accounts are a separate feed

Each lender reports the status of its own account, and those entries are not the insolvency entry. They have their own retention periods, which is why a file can look busy long after the bankruptcy line appears.

No, and the two periods are unrelated. Neither of them sets the other, and only one of them exists in statute.

The two records compared

There is no retention period for the register in the Act or the regulations. The figures in circulation come from guidance, and they do not reconcile with each other.

A page that explains the six years by saying that is how long the register keeps you has merged two different things. The register question deals with what is actually published there.

How this differs from the other Scottish solutions

No credit reference agency publishes a retention rule for a Debt Arrangement Scheme. Experian, Equifax and TransUnion all publish what they hold and for how long, and none of them lists a Debt Arrangement Scheme at all.

A Debt Arrangement Scheme is not an insolvency, so the insolvency schedules do not reach it. Whether a Debt Arrangement Scheme shows on your credit file sets out what was checked.

A protected trust deed is an insolvency and is treated like one, and how long a trust deed stays on your credit file gives the same three schedules applied to it.

They are separate entries with separate retention. The insolvency line and the account lines come off at different times.

What the agencies publish for accounts

A default recorded before the award has its own clock running from the default date. That is why two people discharged on the same day can have very different looking files.

Checking what is actually recorded is the practical step. How long debt information stays on a credit file covers each type of entry.

Borrowing while you are undischarged

Section 218(13) makes it an offence to obtain credit of £2,000 or more without disclosing that your estate has been sequestrated and you have not been discharged.

While you are undischarged you must tell a lender you are bankrupt if you are borrowing £2,000 or more, or any amount at all if you already owe £1,000 or more.

Utility charges and council tax are left out of that £1,000 calculation.

These are disclosure duties rather than bans. The offence is borrowing without saying, not borrowing.

It can, and it is the one thing that reaches past the usual six years. TransUnion publishes that restrictions orders may stay in active use beyond six years.

What an order is, and how long it runs

Section 159(2) gives an order made by the Accountant in Bankruptcy a length of between two and five years, and one made by the sheriff between five and fifteen.

There is no such thing as a bankruptcy restrictions undertaking in Scotland. The 2016 Act provides for orders and interim orders only, and undertakings belong to the law of England and Wales.

Orders are made on conduct grounds rather than on the size of the debt. They are not a routine part of every sequestration.

The credit thresholds are not automatic

The credit restrictions are not automatic. Section 157(1) lets the decision maker specify that they apply, which means some orders carry them and some do not.

So a page telling you that every order carries the same borrowing rules is overstating it. Which jobs and professions sequestration affects covers the other consequences of an order.

Check that it is accurate, and use the statutory correction route if it is not. Section 159 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 still applies and no competitor page in this market mentions it.

The route, with its deadlines

Section 158 gives a right to a copy of your file, and in practice all three agencies provide one free under data protection law.

Where an entry is incorrect and likely to prejudice you, you may require the agency to remove or amend it. The agency then has 28 days to say what it has done.

If you are not satisfied, you have a further 28 days to require a notice of correction of not more than 200 words to be added. The agency has 28 days to confirm compliance or refer the matter on.

The Information Commissioner is the backstop where an agency will not comply.

Two practical checks

Check that the start date on the insolvency entry matches the date of the award. Check that each account it relates to shows the balance as satisfied or included rather than still running.

Those two checks catch most of what actually goes wrong. Neither of them depends on anyone’s goodwill.

What nobody can tell you

No official Scottish source publishes lending criteria or a waiting period after discharge. Treat any confident claim about when a mortgage becomes possible as marketing.

What is knowable is the record itself and its published retention. What a sequestration costs and whether a trust deed would be better are the decisions worth taking advice on instead.