A county court judgment issued against a UK borrower is recorded on the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines and remains there — and on the credit files held by Experian, Equifax and TransUnion — for six years from the date it was made. That is the case whether or not the underlying debt is later repaid. The only route to having the entry removed entirely, rather than marked as settled, is to pay the judgment in full within 30 days of the date it was issued.
What the six-year rule actually covers
The Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines is a public record maintained for England and Wales, and it is searchable by lenders, landlords and, in some cases, employers running credit checks. A judgment appears on the register automatically once a court issues it, and it stays there for the full six years regardless of the amount owed or when payment eventually happens. Credit reference agencies pull from the same register, so the entry on a person's credit file mirrors what shows up in a public search rather than existing as a separate internal record. Lenders assessing a mortgage or loan application see both the original judgment date and its current status, which is why a six-year-old CCJ close to expiry is treated differently from one issued the previous month.
Paying within the 30-day window is the only way to avoid the mark altogether. A borrower who settles in full during that period can write to the court with proof of payment and have the judgment removed from the register, not merely updated. Miss that window — even by a matter of days — and the outcome changes permanently: paying afterwards gets the entry marked "satisfied," which tells anyone checking that the debt was cleared, but the underlying six-year clock keeps running from the original judgment date rather than resetting or shortening. National Debtline, the free debt advice service, notes that borrowers can still ask the court to update the register once a late payment is made; the update changes the status shown, not the six-year duration.
Satisfied still counts against a borrower
A satisfied CCJ reads better to a lender than an unpaid one, but it is not neutral. Mortgage underwriters in particular tend to treat any CCJ — settled or not — as a signal of past financial difficulty, and it can push an applicant out of the most competitively priced products even years after the debt was cleared. The practical effect tends to fade gradually rather than disappear: a judgment approaching its sixth anniversary generally weighs less heavily on a credit score than one registered a few months earlier, though credit reference agencies do not publish a precise decay curve for how much impact a CCJ loses year on year.
There are a small number of additional routes to removal before the six years are up. A judgment can come off the register if the court itself cancels or "sets aside" it, typically because the original claim was disputed successfully or procedural requirements were not met, or if an insurer turns out to have been responsible for the underlying debt rather than the named defendant. Outside those specific circumstances, the register does not offer an early-exit option based on partial repayment, payment plans, or the size of the debt involved.
What happens after six years
Once six years have passed from the judgment date, the entry is removed from both the public register and credit files automatically, without any application needed from the person who owed the debt. The debt itself does not necessarily disappear at that point — a creditor may still, in principle, seek to enforce an old judgment, though doing so after six years typically requires the court's permission under the framework governing enforcement of older debts. That distinction matters for anyone assuming a lapsed CCJ means the underlying obligation has been written off; the credit-file consequence and the legal enforceability of the debt run on separate, if related, timelines.
How other insolvency markers compare
A CCJ is not the only credit-file entry built around a six-year window. Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs) also stay on Experian, Equifax and TransUnion files for six years from the date the arrangement began, regardless of whether the IVA itself runs for five years or six — a detail the government's own IVA Protocol guidance sets out explicitly. Completing an IVA early does not shorten that period either; the record is simply updated to show "completed" rather than being deleted, mirroring the way a satisfied CCJ is marked rather than removed. Bankruptcy follows a broadly similar pattern: Experian's own guidance states that a bankruptcy entry remains on file for six years, or until the point of discharge if that happens to take longer than six years in a particular case.
The practical overlap between these markers matters for anyone reading their own credit file after a period of financial difficulty. A borrower who was made bankrupt and separately had a CCJ registered against them in the same period could see both entries sitting on their file at once, each running down independently rather than on a shared clock. None of the three routes — CCJ, IVA or bankruptcy — offers an early exit tied to partial repayment; the six-year period is fixed once the relevant date is set, whether that is the judgment date for a CCJ or the start date for an IVA.