HOW DO I MAKE CHANGES TO MY CREDIT REPORT?

There is a variety of information held on your credit report from a variety of sources. If any of it is wrong, it could affect your ability to get credit.

To improve your credit score, you will need to correct the information held on your report. Here are the various ways in which you can make changes to your credit report data:

The electoral roll
If you have registered to vote and your credit report does not show this, please contact the three credit reference agencies (Callcredit, Equifax & Experian) and they will investigate the matter. If you have not registered to vote, you may want to contact your local authority about filling in an electoral registration form.

Note that Lenders check the electoral roll as a precaution against fraud, to ensure that you are who you say you are and live at the address you have given. If your name doesn't appear, lenders may not be able to confirm that you live at your address, so you could face ID checks or even rejection

If you move home you can tell your local authority who will tell credit reference agencies about your change of registration in the course of the year.

Court judgments
If you believe a county court judgment has been recorded incorrectly, you should contact the county court, quoting the case number included on your file. If the judgment was recorded incorrectly the county court will alter their records. Credit reference agencies are told about any such changes within four weeks, but if you give them original court documents, in the form of a Certificate of Satisfaction or Cancellation, they may be able to change their records sooner if necessary.

If you have paid a Scottish Decree, you should send Registry Trust (address below) a receipt or a letter from your creditor (known as the pursuer) to confirm your payment.

If you write to Registry Trust Ltd questioning the accuracy of a judgment recorded on your file, asking for an entry to be changed, you should send a cheque for £4.50 to cover their search fee. They will then tell the credit reference agencies about any change to your file.

For judgments made in Northern Ireland, if you provide documents from a plaintiff to confirm a payment, the agencies will change their records. If you have any questions about the accuracy of a judgment recorded on your file, contact the court concerned.

Registry Trust Ltd.
173-175 Cleveland Street
London W1P 5PE

Bankruptcies
If a bankruptcy order against you is annulled (cancelled) or discharged (that is, you have met all terms), you should send a copy of the Annulment Certificate or Order of Discharge to the credit reference agencies. They will then update their records. If your bankruptcy has been annulled they should completely remove any record of it from your file. If your bankruptcy has been discharged a record of it will be kept on your file but it will show that it has been discharged.

Voluntary arrangements
If you have any questions about a record of a voluntary arrangement you should contact the supervisor who dealt with your case. If you send documents from the supervisor to confirm that the information on your file needs to be changed, the agencies will change their records.

Credit accounts
After carefully studying the credit account details (credit cards, loans, mortgages, etc.) on your file, if you believe any information needs to be changed you should write to the lender concerned and ask them to give the correct information to the credit reference agencies.

Searches
Credit reference agencies will delete searches only when they are instructed to do so by the company who searched your file. If you are concerned about the accuracy of a record of a search, you should contact the company which carried out that search.

Linked addresses
Links between your previous addresses, or any addresses you may use for correspondence, may be listed on your credit file. The link will only be broken when the reference agencies are asked to do so by the organisation that created the link.

CIFAS
If you have any questions about a CIFAS record, write to the organisation concerned. If you disagree with that organisation over the information on your file, ask the organisation for details of the scheme for settling disputes.

Financial associations (shared financial responsibility)
If a financial association is shown, and you do not share a financial responsibility with the other person, or if that financial association no longer exists, you should write to the credit reference agencies. They will investigate the matter and make any necessary change to your file.

Aliases
If any names are shown on your credit report that you have never used, you should contact the company listed as providing the other name, or write to the credit reference agency and they will investigate the matter and make any necessary changes to your file.

Information about other people
If you share no financial responsibility with any other person mentioned on your file you can ask the agencies to ‘create a disassociation’. This breaks any connection between your information and theirs and so makes sure their information is removed from your file, and that your information is removed from theirs. To do this you must give the agencies your, and the other person’s, full name and date of birth, details of your relationship and any shared addresses.

Notice of correction
A notice of correction gives an explanation as to why certain circumstances on your credit file occured. This information is noted with the credit reference agencies. An example of how to do this is shown below:

“I Mr A N OtherPerson of [address], would like it to be known that the Judgment recorded against me for [amount £’s] relates to a bill which I could not pay because I was made redundant. I paid the bill in full after I got a job. I would ask anyone searching this file to take these facts into account”.

Note that by adding a notice of correction, credit grantors are prevented from automatically processing your credit applications due to legislation. This means that they must manually assess your credit applications, which means that you need to be careful who you apply for credit with, as it could create lots of extra ‘footprints’ of credit searches on your credit report – this doesn’t look favourable with lenders, so please be selective about whether to use this method of amending your credit report.

To view your personal credit information that lenders are currently basing their credit decisions on, click this link for your: FREE UK CREDIT REPORT and you will also receive a 30-day free trial to the CreditExpert Monitoring Service from Experian.

Alternatively, you can click this link to purchase the: 3 in 1 CREDIT REPORT, which contains credit information from all 3 credit reference agencies (Callcredit, Equifax & Experian).