How long does a DRO stay on your credit file?

How long does a DRO stay on your credit file?

Six years, and the part that trips people up is where the clock starts. The note of your debt relief order stays on your credit file for six years from the date the order was made, which is the date it started and was registered, not the date it ended.

Because a DRO normally runs for twelve months, the marker is usually due to leave your file around five years after the order finished rather than six. If your DRO started in March 2021 and ended in March 2022, the entry is due to come off in March 2027.

Nobody has to apply for that to happen and no form triggers it. The credit reference agencies hold the record and stop reporting it once the six years is up.

What matters practically is that you work from the start date rather than the end date, because using the wrong one puts your date a year too late.

The three dates a DRO produces, and the order they clear in

A debt relief order creates three separate dates, and they clear in an order that can surprise people. The first is the DRO period itself, which normally lasts twelve months from the date it started.

The second is your entry on the Individual Insolvency Register, the public list kept by the Insolvency Service, which is deleted three months after your DRO has ended. The third is the marker on your credit file, which runs six years from the date the order was made.

So the public entry usually clears about fifteen months after it started, and the credit file marker follows more than four years later. That gap is the reason people think something has gone wrong.

Coming off the public register feels like the record has been cleared, and then a lender still sees the DRO, because lenders read credit reference agency data rather than the register. Our guide on how long a DRO lasts covers the twelve-month period, and our guide to the debt relief order register covers the removal of your public entry.

This page is about the third date, the one lenders actually work from.

What happens to the individual debts listed in the DRO

The DRO note is one entry. The individual accounts listed in it are separate entries, each with its own history and its own clock.

Credit reference agencies generally remove an account six years after the date it defaulted, and the defaults may have happened before the order was approved, sometimes well before. That means the listed accounts can start dropping off your file ahead of the DRO note itself, and your report can look progressively tidier over the years while the DRO entry is still sitting there.

The accounts should show as included in the debt relief order rather than as settled or satisfied, because the debts were discharged rather than repaid. That wording is correct and is not an error to complain about.

What is worth checking is that no listed account is still recording new missed payments or a rising balance after the date the order was made, because that does happen, and it is the kind of mistake worth raising.

What actually changes when the marker drops off

Nothing is announced. On the day the six years is up the entry simply stops being reported, and the first you will know about it is when you look.

The agencies refresh at their own pace and lenders refresh their own view of you at theirs, so the change can take a little while to show everywhere, and the three agencies do not always drop the entry on precisely the same day. Your score will usually move once it goes, though by how much depends on everything else on the file rather than on the DRO alone, so it is not a number anyone can promise you in advance.

The more useful way to think about it is that your file stops carrying an explanation. Before the marker drops, a lender sees an insolvency and reads the rest of the file in that light.

After it drops, they see whatever you have built in the meantime, which is why the years in between are worth using rather than waiting out.

How to check it, and what to do if it is still showing

Check all three, because the DRO is reported to each agency separately and they do not correct each other. TransUnion, Equifax and Experian each hold their own file on you, and each has to give you a statutory copy of it, which costs nothing.

Look for three things: that the DRO entry carries the correct start date, that the accounts listed in it are marked as included in the debt relief order, and that nothing listed is still being updated as though it were live. If the six years has passed and the entry is still showing, the fix goes to the credit reference agency rather than to the Insolvency Service, which has no power to change anything on your credit file.

Raise it with the agency in writing, give them the start date and a copy of your DRO paperwork, and keep the correspondence. If the agency does not put it right, the Financial Ombudsman Service exists for that, and it costs consumers nothing to use.

Working out your own date

Find the date the order was made and write it down, because everything else follows from it. It is on the notification you received when the DRO was approved, and it is the date that was recorded against you on the public register while your entry was still there.

Add six years to it and you have the date the marker is due to leave your file. That date is worth planning towards rather than waiting on, because what a lender sees afterwards is the record you built in the years before it.

Your Comeback Plan captures your DRO dates and works out when the marker is due to go.