Here is who actually sets the periods, what the three agencies publish, and how none of it relates to whether a debt is still legally alive.

No. No statute, no statutory instrument and no Financial Conduct Authority rule sets a six-year period for credit file data.

What does set it

Three things, and none of them is legislation. The first is an industry agreement called the Principles of Reciprocity, which governs what data is shared between lenders and the agencies and on what terms.

The second is each agency’s own retention schedule, published under their joint transparency notice. The third is a general data protection ceiling, which is not a period at all.

Even the regulator does not set it

The Information Commissioner’s Office leaflet Credit explained, in its September 2019 version, reports the periods as fact and cites no legal source for any of them. It grounds itself in data protection law generally, which is a different thing from setting a period.

The Credit Information Governance Body, since 31 May 2026. Before that it was the Steering Committee on Reciprocity, which ceased operation on that date.

Why that matters for anything you read on this topic

Every page that explains the six-year rule by reference to SCOR is out of date as of 31 May 2026. The successor body was established by industry stakeholders following the Financial Conduct Authority’s Credit Information Market Study.

It has taken over ownership and administration of the Principles of Reciprocity, and it is a self-regulatory industry body rather than a regulator. The Principles are not law.

What the agencies say themselves

Their joint transparency notice, adopted on 2 December 2024, says at section 7 that each of them may retain data for different periods of time, and points readers at three separate agency pages.

It adds that those periods are subject to regular review and may change. That sentence is the whole answer to whether six years is a rule.

They agree on six years for live decision-making and disagree on almost everything else. That disagreement is the proof that this is practice rather than regulation.

The three schedules, side by side

How the longer periods are lawful

Article 5(1)(e) of the UK GDPR requires personal data to be kept in a form permitting identification for no longer than is necessary, and permits longer storage only where the data will be processed solely for archiving, research or statistical purposes.

That is the carve-out Experian invokes when it describes eleven years as six for live decision-making plus five for profiling. TransUnion does the same when it holds ten years and uses six.

A cross-reference inside Article 5(1)(e) was updated by the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 with effect from 5 February 2026. So the honest account is that six years is how long the industry has agreed the data may be used to decide whether to lend to you, and how you rebuild your credit afterwards is a separate question.

On its own event, not on today’s date and not on the date you pay. A default runs from the recorded date of default, a decree from the date of judgment, and an insolvency from the date it begins.

Why the default date is the number to find

It is the day the lender formally recorded the account as defaulted. It is not the day you first missed a payment, nor the day the debt was passed to a collection agency.

Selling the debt on should not restart it, and a new owner should report the same default date. A second entry with a fresher date is worth disputing.

Settled is not the same as removed

Paying a defaulted account gets it marked as satisfied. The entry itself stays until the agency’s own retention period runs out, which is why what to do if a debt collector contacts you about an old debt is worth reading before you pay anything.

Council tax arrears, the summary warrant behind them and any wage arrestment collecting them. None of the three reaches a credit reference agency, because there is no route by which it could.

The reason, rather than the assertion

A credit file contains only what somebody supplies, and the agencies publish the list of suppliers. A local authority appears on it once, as the source of the electoral register.

There is no register a summary warrant goes on either, and an earnings arrestment is not registered anywhere at all. Do council tax arrears show on your credit report and does a summary warrant show on your credit file deal with each in turn.

Not reported, in a list

• Council tax arrears, however large and however old.
• A summary warrant, and the 10% statutory addition made when one is granted.
• Sheriff officer fees and enforcement expenses added to the balance.
• An earnings arrestment running against your wages, and a bank arrestment on your account.

Still visible in other ways

A deduction is itemised on your payslip and a bank arrestment shows in your statements. A lender assessing affordability rather than running a search may see both, which is the subject of can you get a mortgage with a wage arrestment.

A public register is searchable by anyone and runs on its own clock. A credit file is data held about you and shared with lenders, and neither timetable sets the other.

The registers, and what each one holds

Registry Trust’s figures are its own published description of its own register. No statutory basis for the Scottish register was found, so treat those periods as the operator’s account rather than as law.

The four-week hold, which is genuinely useful

Registry Trust says that once the four-week holding period expires and no proof of payment has arrived, the decree is made publicly available and passed to the credit reference agencies. Pay in full within one calendar month of the decree and it should not stay on the register at all.

The insolvency register empties long before the file does

The Register of Insolvencies holds most entries for a year after the trustee’s discharge. The agencies keep an insolvency for six years, and whether a Debt Arrangement Scheme shows on your credit file explains why the two are unrelated.

No. Credit file retention and the legal life of a debt are two separate systems, and in Scotland they follow completely different rules.

The five years, and the twenty

Under section 6 of the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973 most consumer debts are extinguished after five years with no relevant claim, payment or written acknowledgement. When council tax debt becomes statute barred in Scotland covers prescription generally.

Council tax sits on the twenty-year long negative prescription in section 7 of the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973, because Schedule 1 paragraph 2(fd) excludes it from the five-year rule that clears most consumer debt.

The twenty years run from the date the obligation became enforceable, on the wording substituted into section 7(1) on 28 February 2025.

What enforcement does to the twenty years, and it is not what you have read

Enforcement does not send the clock back to the start. Since 28 February 2025 a relevant claim, which includes executing diligence, extends the twenty-year period until that claim is finally disposed of.

Before that date it restarted the period, and a great deal of published advice has not caught up. What the 20-year rule for council tax debt in Scotland is sets it out in full.

A payment or a written acknowledgement does not affect the twenty-year period at all. Section 10(1) of the 1973 Act now applies only for the purposes of sections 6 and 8A, and section 7 is not among them, so acknowledgement has no part in the twenty-year rule.

The five-year rule is different and has not changed. Under section 6 a payment or a written acknowledgement still interrupts the period and sends it back to the start, which is why the advice to take advice before paying an old debt still holds for ordinary consumer debt.

And who has to prove it

Section 13A of the 1973 Act, inserted on the same date, puts the burden on the creditor. Where a question arises about whether an obligation has been extinguished, it is presumed to have been extinguished unless the creditor proves otherwise.

Whether that helps on your own dates is a legal question rather than a general one. Take the figures to a money adviser.

The two clocks, side by side

Raise it with the credit reference agency in writing, giving the date the entry should have been removed. Entries are meant to drop off automatically, and occasionally one does not.

Where to start

Start with the agency, because it holds the data. Section 159 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 lets you require it to remove or amend an entry you consider incorrect and likely to cause prejudice, and to add a notice of correction of up to 200 words if it will not, and general guidance on debt sits at mygov.scot.

Common causes

• A debt sold on and re-reported with a new default date.
• A default recorded months later than the account actually failed.
• The same debt appearing twice, once under the original lender and once under a purchaser.

Deal with any live enforcement first

A file is worth tidying, and not instead of stopping a deduction. How do you stop a wage arrestment in Scotland sets out the routes, and our council tax debt advice page covers arrangements on arrears.

Where the balance is £25,000 or less excluding interest, a time to pay order is competent against summary warrant debt, and the sheriff must recall an existing earnings arrestment where one is made.