Notice of Correction on your credit report

A Notice of Correction is a statement of up to 200 words that you can have added to your credit file to explain the circumstances behind an entry on it¹. The right comes from section 159 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, which lets you require a credit reference agency to add the notice, drawn up by you, alongside the information you want to explain¹. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the regulator for data protection, describes it as a way to write a statement explaining your situation, one that will be seen by anyone who looks at the entry on your credit reference file and should be taken into consideration if you apply for credit².

It costs nothing to add, and you can remove it at any time³. What it does not do is change your credit score: the notice sits beside the entry, and it is up to the lender reading the file to weigh it. This page explains when a notice is worth adding, how to add one with each of the three main UK credit reference agencies, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, and what to do if an agency refuses your wording.

What a Notice of Correction is: up to 200 words in your own words

A Notice of Correction is your own explanation, in your own words, attached to an entry on your credit reference file. The legal limit is 200 words, set by section 159 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, which gives you the right to require the agency to add "an accompanying notice of correction (not exceeding 200 words) drawn up by the" person the file is about¹. The ICO's guidance for the public puts the same limit on it: "This is a statement of up to 200 words, which you can write"⁴.

The notice is attached to a specific entry rather than to your file as a whole. That matters for how you write it. A notice that explains one missed payment on one account is doing a different job from a notice that explains a period of illness affecting several accounts, and the agency will place it against the entry you identify. The ICO describes the effect in these terms:

Information Commissioner's Office²

Because the limit is 200 words, the statement has to be short and factual. Debt and mental health guidance from Business Debt Line describes it in the same way: "This is a statement of up to 200 words that allows you to explain your circumstances to potential creditors"³. There is no charge for adding one, and no fee to remove or change it later³.

When a Notice of Correction can help

A Notice of Correction helps in the situation where the information on your file is accurate but the bare facts do not tell the whole story. The House of Commons Library, summarising how credit reference agencies work, notes that "CRAs won't remove adverse information if it's correct, although consumers may ask to submit a 'notice of correction' note to explain the circumstances"⁵. That is the heart of it: if an entry is wrong, the answer is to have it corrected or removed, and there is a separate process for that; if the entry is right but needs context, the notice is the tool for the job.

Circumstances where a notice is commonly used include:

• A period of illness, including mental health problems, that led to missed payments which have since been brought up to date. Guidance on debt and mental health notes that a notice can be used to explain such circumstances to potential creditors³.
• A one-off life event, such as bereavement or a relationship breakdown, that temporarily affected your finances.
• Entries that look worse than they are, for example a settled debt recorded in a way that suggests it is still outstanding.
• Not being able to register on the electoral roll, where a notice can explain why that entry is missing or marked differently.
• Fraudulent accounts opened in your name, where a notice explains the position to lenders while the fraudulent entries are investigated.

The mental health angle is worth spelling out, because it is one of the most common reasons people add a notice. Business Debt Line's guidance on debt and mental health sets out that the notice is a statement of up to 200 words explaining your circumstances to potential creditors, and that only organisations actively checking your credit reference file will see it³. For someone whose file shows arrears from a period of poor mental health, the notice is a way of making sure a human reader knows the arrears were tied to a specific episode and not to how they normally manage money.

What a notice cannot do is remove or override accurate information. The Commons Library briefing is clear that agencies will not remove adverse information if it is correct⁵. If the information is wrong, incomplete, or not yours, the better route is to ask for it to be corrected, which is covered in how to correct wrong information on your credit report. The comparison page notice of correction vs raising a dispute sets the two routes side by side.

It does not change your credit score, but it changes how the application is handled

This is the point most people get wrong. A Notice of Correction has no effect on your credit score. The score is calculated from the data on your file: payment history, balances, electoral roll registration, searches and public records. A notice is not data of that kind; it is an annotation. Experian, Equifax and TransUnion each calculate their own scores from the entries, and none of them changes a score because a notice has been added.

What the notice changes is the decision, or rather how the decision is made. The ICO's position is that the statement "should be taken into consideration if you apply for credit"². In practice that means a lender that would otherwise decline an application automatically, because an automated system reads a missed payment or a default and rejects the file, may instead route the application to a person who reads the notice and weighs the explanation.

There are rules on the lender's side that shape how this works. Under FCA rules, a firm undertaking a credit reference search should not leave evidence of an application on a credit file where a customer is not yet ready to apply, which is why quotation searches exist and why some lenders use them before a full application⁶. And where the terms offered depend on the customer's credit record, FCA rules state a credit reference agency must not be used unless it would be quicker than asking the customer the relevant questions about their credit history, or the customer is not able to provide sufficient information on their credit history⁷. A notice on the file is one way the customer's own account of their history reaches the lender.

The practical trade-off is speed. An application that has to be read by a person takes longer than one an automated system approves or declines in seconds. For a mortgage, where underwriting is manual anyway, the delay may be barely noticeable. For a quick online credit card or catalogue application, a notice can mean the application is referred rather than decided instantly. Some people keep a notice on their file permanently because they want every application read properly; others add one only when applying for something specific, such as a mortgage, and remove it afterwards. Since you can remove the notice at any time³, the choice is yours and can change with your circumstances.

Who sees your notice and what lenders must do with it

A Notice of Correction is not a public document and it is not sent to anyone on its own. Business Debt Line's guidance states plainly: "Only organisations that are actively checking your credit reference file will see the notice"³. That means lenders, credit card issuers, mobile phone networks, energy suppliers and any other organisation that carries out a credit search when you apply for something. An employer does not see it unless the employer is actively checking your credit reference file, which is not the position for most jobs.

When an entry on your file is changed, the change is circulated. The ICO's guidance on credit explains that when an entry is amended, "The agency will also send the details to any lender that has searched your credit reference file in the last six months"⁴. So a notice added after a declined application can reach the lender that declined you, which matters if you plan to reapply to the same firm.

On the lender's side, there are duties that bear on how your file, notice included, is treated. Under the FCA's Consumer Credit sourcebook, if an application for credit is declined on the basis of information from a credit reference agency, the creditor must tell the consumer and provide contact details for the credit reference agency⁸. That is how you find out which agency's file led to the decline, and therefore where to add your notice. Under the FCA's rules for lenders in difficulty situations, a lender must monitor and adapt its communications to support understanding and good outcomes for consumers⁹, which is the general backdrop to how a notice should be handled once a lender is aware of it.

A related point on searches: FCA rules state that a firm undertaking a credit reference search should not leave evidence of an application on a credit file where a customer is not yet ready to apply⁶. This is why eligibility checkers and quotation searches exist, and it is covered in hard and soft credit searches. It matters here because a notice is seen by whoever searches the file, so the fewer searches there are, the fewer organisations read it.

How to add a Notice of Correction with Experian, Equifax and TransUnion

There are three main credit reference agencies in the UK: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. Each holds its own version of your credit file, and a notice added to one does not appear on the others. If you want the notice to be seen whoever a lender checks, you need to add it separately to all three. The page on the UK credit reference agencies explains who they are and how they differ.

The process is the same in substance for each agency:

1. Check your file first. Get your statutory credit report or a free service report from each agency, so you know exactly which entry you are explaining. See how to check your credit report for free.
2. Identify the entry. The notice is attached to a specific account or record, so note the account name, the lender and the entry you want to explain.
3. Write your statement. Up to 200 words, in your own words, factual and free of anything a reader could read as an excuse to lend to you regardless. The ICO's guidance on getting your data corrected is a useful model for how to frame a request: state clearly what you believe is inaccurate or incomplete, explain how the organisation should correct it, and where available provide evidence¹⁰.
4. Send it to each agency. A request can be verbal or in writing, as the ICO puts it for data correction requests generally¹⁰, but for a notice of correction, writing is the safer route because the 28-day response duty runs from your letter⁴. There is no charge³.
5. Wait for the response. By law the agency must tell you within 28 days of your letter whether it has added the notice, amended it, or refused it⁴.

Once the notice is added, the agency must also tell the lender or other organisation that supplied the information. Under the Consumer Credit (Notification of Determinations by Credit Reference Agencies) Regulations, the agency must notify the relevant organisation within 10 working days after an entry has been removed, amended, or a notice of correction added¹³. So the lender whose entry you have annotated is told about the notice, which is what keeps the two sides of the file consistent.

If you are adding a notice to explain mental health circumstances, the guidance on debt and mental health is worth reading alongside, and the narrow page adding a mental health note to your file covers that route in detail.

How long a notice stays on your file and how to remove it

A Notice of Correction stays on your file until you remove it. There is no fixed term set by the Consumer Credit Act for the notice itself, unlike the entries it sits beside, which have their own retention periods covered in how long information stays on your credit file. Business Debt Line's guidance states that "you can remove the notice of correction at any time"³.

That freedom cuts both ways. A notice written for one purpose can outlive its usefulness. A notice explaining arrears from a period of illness reads differently five years later, when the arrerows have long since been settled and the file has recovered. Because the notice is seen by every organisation that searches your file³, an out-of-date notice is read by every one of them too. It is worth reviewing a notice once the circumstances it explains have passed, and removing or rewriting it then.

To remove or change a notice, contact the agency that holds it, in writing, in the same way you added it. The agency must respond within 28 days of your letter, the same deadline that applies when you first ask for the notice to be added⁴. If you change your wording rather than removing the notice, the new statement still has to come in under the 200-word limit¹.

One thing to be clear about: removing a notice does not remove the entry it explained. The entry stays on your file for as long as the rules allow, and the notice was only ever the annotation beside it. If the entry itself is wrong or should no longer be there, that is a correction or dispute, not a notice, and it is covered in how to correct wrong information on your credit report.

If the credit reference agency will not accept your wording

An agency can refuse a notice, and the law sets out what happens then. The Commons Library briefing, citing MoneyHelper, notes that "The CRA should remove the information or explain why it won't within 28 days" when you challenge an entry, and that the ICO says "CRAs can't amend data on credit files provided by other companies without that company's permission"⁵. The same logic applies to notices: an agency that believes your wording is improper, defamatory, or unsuitable for publication does not have to add it as written.

There is a formal route when an agency refuses. The Consumer Credit (Credit Reference Agency) Regulations 2000 allow an agency to apply to a relevant authority, described in the regulations as the Data Protection Commissioner or the Director General of Fair Trading, for a determination on whether to publish the notice¹⁴. The application must state the name and address of the agency and of the person who served the notice, and give an indication of when the notice of correction was served¹⁵. It must be accompanied by a copy of the file or information given, a copy of the notice of correction, and a copy of related correspondence, and must state the grounds on which it appears improper to publish the notice¹⁶. The regulations set out these application requirements in full¹⁷.

In practice, most refusals are about wording rather than about the right itself. The common ground for refusal is a statement that goes beyond explaining your circumstances into something a reader could not verify, or that comments on another person or company. The fix is usually to rewrite the notice so it sticks to the facts of your own situation: what happened, when, what you did about it, and where things stand now. Keeping inside 200 words helps here, because it forces the statement to stay tight¹.

The comparison above is the decision in one picture. If the information is correct but needs context, the notice is the right tool. If it is wrong, ask for it to be corrected; the agency should respond within 28 days⁵. If it is incomplete, the ICO's guidance on the right to rectification states that "If your data is incomplete, you can ask for the organisation to complete it by adding more details"¹⁰. And if the data came from a lender, remember the agency cannot amend it without that company's permission⁵, so the dispute may need to go to the lender as well as the agency. The narrow page when an agency refuses your notice of correction covers the refusal route in detail.

Identity theft and the notice

Identity theft is one situation where a notice works alongside other steps rather than instead of them. If accounts have been opened in your name by someone else, the entries on your file are wrong in the sense that they are not yours, and the long-term answer is to have them removed through the dispute process. The notice explains the position to lenders in the meantime, so that a fraudulent account does not read as your debt while it is being investigated.

The ICO's guidance on identity theft sets out the first steps: "Report the theft of personal documents and suspicious credit applications to the police and ask for a crime reference number"¹⁸. The same guidance is available in Welsh from the ICO¹⁹. A crime reference number is useful evidence both for the credit reference agencies and for the lenders whose names appear on the fraudulent entries.

The sequence that follows is straightforward:

1. Report the theft or the suspicious applications to the police and get a crime reference number¹⁸.
2. Check your credit file at all three agencies to see what has been opened in your name. See how to check your credit report for free.
3. Contact the lenders named on the fraudulent entries and the credit reference agencies, with the crime reference number.
4. Add a Notice of Correction explaining that entries relating to fraudulent applications are under investigation, so lenders reading the file in the meantime know the position.

The fuller route, including protective registration and the markers used to flag fraud, is covered in identity fraud and your credit file and Cifas markers and Protective Registration.

Where to get free help

You do not need to pay anyone to add a Notice of Correction. The right is yours under section 159 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974¹, it is free to use³, and the agencies must respond within 28 days of your letter⁴. Credit repair companies charge for things you can do yourself, which is covered in credit repair companies and fixing your credit file yourself.

Free, impartial help is available from:

• The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the data protection regulator, whose guidance on credit files explains the notice and your wider rights over your data², and whose guidance on the right to get your data corrected sets out how to frame a correction request¹⁰. The ICO also handles complaints about credit reference agencies.
• MoneyHelper, the government-backed money guidance service, which the Commons Library briefing cites for the 28-day response standard and the process for challenging entries⁵.
• Business Debt Line, whose guidance on debt and mental health covers the notice alongside other options for people with mental health problems and debt³.
• The credit reference agencies themselves, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, each of which has a process for adding a notice and for disputing entries.

If an agency refuses your notice and you believe the refusal is wrong, the ICO is the body to complain to, since the regulations route agency applications to the data protection authority¹⁴. The wider picture of your rights over your file is in your data rights over your credit file, and the section page credit scores and credit reports brings the whole subject together.