When does a Trust Deed leave your credit file?

The six-year rule, plainly

A Trust Deed is recorded on your credit file from the date it starts, and it stays there for six years from that date. Not six years from your discharge, and not six years from your final payment: six years from the day it started.

If your Trust Deed started on 10 March 2021 and ended before 10 March 2027, it leaves your credit file on 10 March 2027. If it ran longer than six years, it leaves on the date it ended.

Why your Trust Deed stays on your file after you are discharged

A protected Trust Deed normally runs for around four years, and you are discharged at the end of the term once you have met your obligations. Your trustee applies to the Accountant in Bankruptcy for your discharge using Form 5 and must tell you the date you were discharged.

But the six-year credit file clock keeps running from the date it started, so the marker typically stays on your file for roughly two more years after discharge. Being discharged does not clear your credit file: it changes the entry to discharged or settled while the six-year term plays out.

A Trust Deed that ran longer than six years, for example after payment changes, leaves the file on the date it ended.

The Register of Insolvencies is a separate clock

Your protected Trust Deed appears on the Register of Insolvencies, the public register kept by the Accountant in Bankruptcy that anyone can search. This is not the same as your credit file, and it follows its own rules for removing entries.

The two are independent: coming off the Register of Insolvencies does not clear your credit file, and it is the credit file six-year clock that governs what lenders see.

The debts inside your Trust Deed have their own clocks

The Trust Deed marker is not the only entry involved. Each debt that went into your Trust Deed usually carries a default on your file, and every default is removed six years from the date it was recorded, independently of the Trust Deed itself.

Where defaults were recorded around the time the Trust Deed started or shortly before, they fall off at or before the same time as the Trust Deed marker. Two things to check on each one once you are discharged: the balance should show as zero, satisfied or settled, and no default should be dated after your Trust Deed started.

A default dated later than your start date is a known problem worth disputing, because it would otherwise extend a clock that should already be running.

What actually happens on the day it drops off

Nothing you will notice, which is rather the point. Nothing arrives to mark the day, which is why knowing it in advance matters.

From that day, at each of the three credit reference agencies, the insolvency entry stops being reported. Other entries run on their own dates, and some application forms still ask about past insolvency.

How to check it has gone, and what to do if it has not

Shortly after your date, check your report with all three credit reference agencies, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, using their free statutory reports. The entry should be gone from all three.

If it is still showing, raise a dispute with the agency directly, referencing the start date and the confirmation of your discharge date. Agencies must investigate, and an expired Trust Deed entry is a clear-cut correction.

This is why the confirmation of your discharge date matters years after you stop thinking about your Trust Deed: it is the proof that settles any argument.

You do not have to wait for the date to start rebuilding

The removal date is when the mark disappears, not when your options begin. Once you are discharged you can start rebuilding: registering on the electoral roll, keeping every bill on time, keeping any credit you do have well inside its limit, and using products designed for people rebuilding a file.

That way, when the marker drops, your file already shows clean history behind it, and the improvement lands on a foundation rather than a blank page.