How to check and improve your credit file before applying
The short answer
Check all three agencies, not one. Experian, Equifax and TransUnion hold different information, because lenders do not all report to all three. An error can sit on one file and not the others.
You never need to pay. Each agency offers a free account, and separately you have a legal right to a free statutory report. Paid monitoring buys convenience, not access.
Start six months before you apply if you can. The things that genuinely help, correcting errors and letting a clean payment record build, take time. Nothing works quickly.
The score in the app is not the score a lender sees. There is no single UK credit score and no pass mark. Treat it as a rough temperature reading, and pay attention to the underlying entries instead.
There is no such thing as your credit score
This is the misunderstanding that causes most of the wasted effort, so it is worth clearing up first.
Each agency calculates its own number using its own formula from its own data. The three will not match, and none of them is the number a lender uses. A lender may pull data from one agency, from several, or from none at all if you are an existing customer it already knows. It will usually run its own internal scorecard, and it will weigh that alongside your income, your outgoings, the details of what you are applying for, its own history with you and its fraud checks. Different models are used for credit cards, loans, mortgages and current accounts, so the same person can be approved for one and declined for another on the same day.
The practical consequence is that chasing a higher app score is chasing the wrong thing. What lenders actually read is the file underneath: who you owe, whether you pay on time, how much of your available credit you are using, and whether anything has gone wrong in the past six years. Fix the file and the score follows. The reverse is not true.
Getting your files, free
Two different routes exist, and they are commonly confused.
The free account
Each of the three agencies offers a free consumer account giving you a score and your report. Some agencies' data is also available through free partner services, so you may already have access to one without realising. These accounts are genuinely free rather than trials, though they are funded by showing you credit products, so expect to be marketed at.
The statutory report
Separately, and more importantly, you have a legal right to the personal data each agency holds about you. This is a subject access request under Article 15 of the UK GDPR. It is free, it is not a trial, and no agency can require a subscription in order to supply it.
The Information Commissioner's Office sets out how this works. You can ask verbally or in writing, there is normally an online form, and there is no fee in ordinary cases. A written request should include your name, any previous names, your current address, your addresses for the past six years and your date of birth. The agency normally has one month to respond, extendable by up to two further months for a genuinely complex request, but it must tell you within the first month if it intends to take longer and explain why.
The statutory report will not include the monitoring alerts, identity protection or educational score that come with a paid product. It will include the factual record, which is the part that determines lending decisions.
Why one file is not enough
There is no official public directory showing which lender reports to which agency, and the arrangements are messier than most people assume. Some lenders report to all three. Some report to one or two. Some search one agency for a credit card and a different one for a mortgage. A lender's arrangements can change when it switches supplier or replaces an underwriting system.
You will find bank-by-bank tables online claiming to map this. Treat them with suspicion. They are usually incomplete, often product-specific, and go out of date quietly. The reliable instruction is the simple one: check all three before anything that matters. There are also smaller agencies operating in the UK, so the three main files are the practical standard rather than a complete picture.
How long things stay on
Six years is the general answer, but the detail matters, particularly for county court judgments where there is a real opportunity most people miss.
| Entry | How long, and the detail worth knowing |
|---|---|
| Default | Six years from the date of default, not from the date you pay. Paying changes the status to satisfied or partially satisfied, which lenders view considerably more favourably, but it does not remove the entry early. |
| County court judgment | Six years from the judgment date. However, if you pay it in full within one calendar month of judgment, it should be removed from the register entirely rather than marked satisfied. It should also go if the court sets it aside. That one month window is worth acting on immediately. |
| Bankruptcy | Usually six years from the bankruptcy order, or until the insolvency has ended if that takes longer. Restrictions orders can run to their own timetable. |
| Individual voluntary arrangement | Normally six years from the date it starts. If the arrangement runs beyond six years, the record can remain until it ends. |
| Hard search | Normally visible to lenders for twelve months. Agencies may retain search data longer for audit and statistical purposes, but that is not the same as lenders seeing it as a live application. |
| Settled accounts and late payments | A closed account without a default is generally kept for six years from closure. Late payment markers sit within the account history and are not wiped the moment you clear the balance. |
What actually improves a file
Very little of this is clever, and none of it is fast.
- Register on the electoral roll. Agencies use the full register to confirm your name and address, which reduces identity uncertainty. Note that this is the full register, not the optional open register, so opting out of the open register does not harm you. It is a verification step rather than a guaranteed points increase.
- Pay everything on time, every time. Payment history is the backbone of the file. Direct debits for at least the minimum on everything remove the risk of an expensive slip on a month you were busy.
- Reduce how much of your available credit you are using. Being close to the limit on cards reads as strain, even when you clear the balance each month. Bringing usage down is one of the faster levers available, though faster here means a billing cycle or two rather than days.
- Leave old accounts open. A long, unremarkable history is an asset. Closing a card you have held for a decade removes both that history and some available credit.
- Space out applications. Several hard searches in quick succession suggest either a problem or a spree. There is no need to avoid applying for things you need, but do not shop for several products at once in the months before a mortgage.
- Check for accounts you do not recognise. This is the one thing on the list that can be urgent. An unfamiliar account may be fraud, and finding it now is very much better than finding it in an underwriter's decline letter.
Work out how long your current balances will take to clear, and what a change in payment would do to that. No sign-up, and nothing you enter is stored.
Boost, rent reporting and the rest
The agencies sell optional products that promise to lift your score using data from outside conventional borrowing. They are worth understanding realistically rather than dismissing or over-trusting.
Experian Boost connects a current account through Open Banking and looks at qualifying regular payments, such as council tax, savings or certain household bills, which may then add an adjustment to your Experian score. The connection normally needs renewing every 90 days. The limitations are the important part: it changes the Experian consumer score rather than the underlying history, not every payment qualifies, not everyone sees an increase, and not every lender uses a Boost-adjusted score. It does not remove a default, a judgment or a missed payment.
Rental Exchange and similar schemes let participating landlords or tenant services report rent payments to one or more agencies. For someone with little conventional borrowing, that can build genuine positive payment history, which is a real benefit. Coverage depends entirely on whether your landlord or provider participates, so for many renters it is simply unavailable.
The honest summary is that these products can help at the margin, particularly for thin files. They are commercial services rather than rights, and none of them is a repair mechanism for accurate adverse information.
Correcting something that is wrong
Errors are common enough that checking is worthwhile purely for this. The process is free, and the sequence matters.
Two related tools are worth knowing about, though neither does what people often hope.
A notice of correction is a short free statement, limited to 200 words at Experian, attached to an entry to explain context. It suits accurate information that needs explaining, such as arrears during a period of illness or bereavement. It does not change your score, and it can slow applications down because a human may need to read it. Add it separately at each agency holding the entry.
A notice of disassociation removes a financial link to another person, typically an ex-partner. It is not available simply because a relationship ended. The joint accounts and other financial links normally have to be closed or transferred first, and you apply to each agency separately with evidence that the connection no longer exists.
Timing it around a mortgage application
If you are heading towards a mortgage, the order and the timing both matter.
Six months out is the point at which checking is most useful, because that leaves room to correct an error and to let a few clean months build. Three months out is still worthwhile. The week before you apply is largely too late for anything except spotting fraud, which is reason enough on its own.
In the final months, avoid opening new credit, avoid closing long-held accounts, and keep card balances well below their limits across the statement dates the lender will see. Remember that lenders read bank statements as well as credit files, so gambling transactions, frequent unarranged overdraft use and returned direct debits all get noticed regardless of what the file says.
The next step Guide: what a mortgage in principle actually commits you toOnce your file is in order, this is what happens next, including whether the check involved will show up on it.
What is changing
The Financial Conduct Authority has been working through the remedies from its Credit Information Market Study, which looked at exactly the problems described above: patchy coverage, inconsistent data and a difficult correction process.
Its consultation CP26/7 was published on 20 February 2026 and closed on 1 May 2026. The proposals would designate Experian, Equifax and TransUnion as designated consumer credit reference agencies, and would generally require a firm reporting information to one of them to report the same information to all. They also cover data accuracy, dispute handling and the reporting of satisfied judgments.
None of this is in force. As at 11 August 2026 the FCA was still considering responses, and the proposed approach contemplated a twelve-month implementation period after a final policy statement, with a further six months for firms reporting for the first time. Anything you read presenting mandatory reporting as current law is ahead of itself. A separate industry governance body has been established to oversee the industry-led parts of the package, which is progress but not the same as the consumer remedies taking effect.
Until it changes, the position stands: check all three, because nothing obliges a lender to report to more than one.