What is a Notice of Correction with your credit report?

If the information in your credit report is misleading in some way, or misrepresents you, and the credit reference agency isn’t able to remove or amend it, you’re entitled to use a Notice of Correction (NOC) to explain your situation.

Adding a Notice of Correction is useful if you’ve experienced an adverse event that’s affected your financial stability - ill health or job loss, for example, and you can let lenders know that your situation isn’t simply due to poor money management.

The correction notice can be up to 200 words in length, but it mustn’t be inaccurate, libellous, or defamatory to a third party. So how do you add a Notice of Correction to your credit file?

How to add a Notice of Correction

There are three main credit reference agencies in the UK – Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion, which was previously Callcredit. Each agency will have its own form to request a Notice of Correction, and you may be able to download these from the websites.

Alternatively, you could contact each agency by phone or email to let them know you want to add a notice to your credit file. Bear in mind, however, that each of the credit reference agencies typically holds different information about you, and if all three credit reports are misleading you might need to lodge a correction notice with all of them.

It’s worthwhile knowing that any borrowing application made after the Notice of Correction has been added will need to be reviewed manually by the lender. This can delay your applications, as it’s not possible to provide an automatic decision when a Notice of Correction is present.

If you would like more information on Notices of Correction, our experts at Scotland Debt Solutions can help. We specialise in helping Scottish residents deal with debt, and can offer free same-day meetings in our offices around Scotland.