So the entry is not a consequence of protection. It is protection.

For a lot of people this is the hardest part of the decision. The worry is usually vaguer than the reality, and the reality is checkable.

Here is what the register is, what your entry actually shows, when it goes up and when it comes off. What a protected trust deed is covers the solution itself.

The public record of Scottish personal insolvency, kept by the Accountant in Bankruptcy. Section 200(1)(c) makes maintaining it one of AiB’s general functions, in such form as may be prescribed.

What the statute requires it to contain

Those six paragraphs are the whole of section 200(2). A trust deed sits at paragraph (c), alongside sequestrations at (b).

It is not a credit reference agency and not a debt company

AiB is a Scottish Government agency. The same section gives it the supervision of trustees under protected trust deeds, which is why the register and the regulator are the same body.

Scotland has its own system. The Individual Insolvency Register, the IVA and the Official Receiver are English concepts and none of them applies here.

A moratorium goes on it too

This catches people out. Section 195(3) requires AiB to enter a person who takes a statutory moratorium in the register of insolvencies and in the DAS register, so a moratorium taken before signing puts you on two free public registers for its duration.

That is worth knowing before you use one as a holding step. How a statutory moratorium protects you sets out what it does and what it costs.

At the notice stage, weeks before protection. The trustee sends AiB the Form 1 notice without delay after the signed deed is delivered, and that notice is published before anyone knows whether the deed will be protected.

Publication is a step in the process, not a reward

Publication of the notice is what starts the five-week creditor objection window. The period begins the day after publication, so the entry has to exist before the clock can run.

If protection is then refused, or the trustee misses the four-week deadline to apply, the deed stays an ordinary unprotected trust deed. What happens between signing a trust deed and it becoming protected covers that sequence and what it means for you.

Stage by stage

The last row is the one people forget. Your discharge is registered too, and the date of registration is the date of your discharge.

Less than people fear. The prescribed form of the register is schedule 2 to the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Regulations 2016, and its category B for protected trust deeds runs to a short list of facts about the deed rather than a description of your finances.

Recorded, and not recorded

That is schedule 2 as made, which prescribes five categories in total: sequestrations, protected trust deeds, bankruptcy restrictions, moratorium notices and corporate winding up.

The last row of that table matters more than the rest

Schedule 2 says what goes in and says nothing about when anything comes out. That silence is why the retention period in the next section but one is practice rather than law.

It is also why different pages put different numbers on it. Where there is no rule, the figures diverge and none of them can be cited to a provision.

What the entry does not prove

An entry says a trust deed was registered. It does not say what you owed, who you owed it to, or how much you are paying each month.

That distinction matters if you are weighing the register against the alternative of creditors chasing you individually.

Anyone, and it is free. Section 200(7) requires AiB to make the register available for inspection at all reasonable times and to provide any person, on request, with a certified copy of an entry.

There is no gatekeeping and no reason test

AiB publishes guidance on searching the register, and the search facility is open to anyone with an interest. Nobody has to justify a search.

The register is open to anyone. How often any particular kind of searcher uses it is not something the published sources record.

Your employer is a separate question, and a narrower one

A public record existing is not the same as somebody looking at it. Whether you have to tell your employer about your trust deed deals with that properly, including a widely repeated claim about company directorships that does not hold up.

Neighbours, friends and family are not notified. There is no announcement beyond the register entry and the mailing your trustee sends to creditors.

About a year after the deed completes, on the Accountant in Bankruptcy’s own stated practice. No statute sets a period, so treat the figure as practice rather than as a guarantee.

What AiB says, and where it says it

The protected trust deed information document says the entry appears for the deed’s duration plus 12 months after completion. That is the document your trustee has to give you before you sign.

AiB’s notes for guidance on the register, last updated 1 July 2026, describe information being held, for the majority of bankruptcies, for the longer of one year after the trustee’s discharge, one year after a recall, or one year after a restrictions period ends.

No statutory basis for the 12 months was found

Section 200 sets no time-based deletion rule and schedule 2 sets none either. Anyone presenting that period as a statutory entitlement is going further than the sources allow.

On a deed that runs the standard 48-month payment period, the practical effect is an entry visible for something over five years in total.

A deed that never gets protected

The Form 1 notice has already been published by that point, so something has been on the register either way. What has not happened is the second entry, the registration that creates protection.

Ask your trustee what the register will show in that scenario, because it is the one situation where the paperwork and the outcome do not match.

Only where publication would put someone at risk. AiB records a discretionary power to withhold certain personal details of an individual for their own protection, and it is a safety provision rather than a privacy option.

How AiB describes the balance

AiB’s publication on its sensitivity obligation for public registers, last updated 23 July 2026, says the power covers exceptional instances and must be balanced against maintaining the integrity of the registers so that debtors remain readily identifiable.

So it is a decision for AiB, not an election you or your trustee can simply make. Raise it before signing rather than afterwards, because the entry exists from registration.

Solutions with a lower public profile

A Debt Payment Programme under the Debt Arrangement Scheme is recorded on the DAS Register rather than the Register of Insolvencies, and it is not an insolvency solution.

A Debt Management Plan is informal and non-statutory, so there is no register entry at all. The trade-off is that it does not stop diligence, so an arrestment can proceed while one runs.

No, and neither sets the other. The register comes off about a year after the deed completes, while the credit file entry runs for six years from the start of the deed on the credit reference agencies’ own schedules.

The link between them runs one way

AiB runs a commercial daily data download from the register which the main credit reference agencies subscribe to, so the register is how the insolvency reaches your file. How long a trust deed stays on your credit file sets that chain out in full.

What does not follow is the period. A page telling you the file keeps it for six years because the register does is wrong twice over, because the register does not.

Before you decide

• Ask your trustee to confirm what will be published and when.
• Ask what happens to the entry if protection is refused.
• Check whether the publicity concern is really an employment concern, because those have different answers.

If the register is the thing holding you back, say so out loud to a free adviser before ruling anything in or out. 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.