In answer to the query about how long credit reference agencies hold credit information for... in theory it's six years. We don't know that they hold credit information for longer than that but they do hold details of who's lived where for longer than that. If you look in the Equifax/Experian electoral roll stuff in the Blacklisted section of this site you'll see information going back 14 years.(posted 9180 days ago)They must not make credit information available if it is more than six years old. But that doesn't mean that it isn't archived or retained as part of data backups.