Registry Trust

What we do and our misson

Registry Trust was established in 1985 to maintain the official statutory Register of Judgments, Orders, and Fines for England & Wales on behalf of the Ministry of Justice, and maintains similar Registers for Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Isle of Man, and Jersey by agreement with the relevant authorities.

Our ‘live’ data on monetary judgments (including CCJs) supports millions of lending and credit decisions in the UK & Ireland every year, helping to keep the economy moving and identify economic trends. It even creates usable credit metrics through the absence of a judgment record.

We are responsible for handling and responding to all enquiries from consumers, courts, businesses, and government regarding the Register and we operate TrustOnline (www.trustonline.org.uk); the only service that provides immediate public access to the complete Register, allowing anyone to search for individuals or businesses to see if they have a registered judgment. As a trusted and impartial source of credit information and data in indebtedness, we also provide a range of services to credit reference agencies, government bodies, charities, regulators, think tanks, and other organisations.

Every day we receive a secure data feed from the courts, providing new or amended entries to the Register of Judgments, Orders, and Fines, which contains millions of records – England & Wales alone has 6m+. We process an average of 134,822 records per month – more than 6,199 records per working day. Our operations team review, quality check, and process the data within hours of receiving it. They also manage the removal of records from the Register after five years for fines and six years for all other records. The data is then uploaded to TrustOnline, and sent to our bulk data users.

As a not-for-profit company which doesn't cost the government or tax-payer any money and a trusted and impartial source of credit information, our mission is to use and share this 'public data for public good' to encourage responsible lending and borrowing, enable good business decisions, inform public discussion on the economy and household finances, and empower consumers. One of the ways we do this is by campaigning to improve the accuracy and range of public monetary judgment data available to improve data matching capabilities, reap tangible benefits for those listed on the Register, and support those in financial difficulty. This includes lobbying for changes to the CCJ process to make it fairer for those most vulnerable by increasing transparency of claimant data and we are developing a ‘partial satisfaction’ Register to ensure that partial payment of a debt is recognised on credit files. We also analyse, publish, and disseminate our data via our website (including regular insight blogs), social media channels, the media, and via our contacts database to make it as widely available as possible and we are actively engaged in public education around dealing with satisfying CCJs, credit scores, and financial health generally.

Our Pillars

  
        Public
      
We work with consumers, charities, and credit reference agencies to deliver an exceptional public service. We believe in transparency in public and corporate life and we work to encourage the development of better behaviours by public bodies and corporations, helping citizens to hold public bodies and corporations to account.

        Economy
      
Judgment data is one of the most important factors in determining the health of the economy – we provide insight and analysis that is able to support good economic and financial decision making. We want to ensure businesses are making better decisions that support responsible lending and borrowing.

        Policy
      
Our data is used to guide and inform debate about and promote understanding of major public policy issues relating to the economy and household finances. We work with regulators, Think Tanks, and Government bodies to ensure that regulations and policy are created with the right information at hand.