Housekeeping question - time-statute on throwing out old bank statements etc?

EasyToAssemble01

Not sure if this is the right forum, but I'm struggling to find any exact info online. I'm looking to shred and dispose of old bills, payslips, and statements, but no idea what the maximum time limit should be for keeping them.

Sources online say at least 2-3 years, but never suggest an upper limit. Mine are all around 10 years or older.

Apart from (maybe) proof of residence, I have no particular need for them, so am I OK to dispose of anything 10 years or older? I have a shredder, and also work in an organisation with confidential waste disposal, so am planning to use that.

On-the-coast

I recently disposed of about 20 years of “junk” statements payslips etc.  
I’ve not been keeping anything since my bank accounts mostly went digital about 5 years ago. As did my payslips. 

I do scan & save annual interest statements P60 etc for my tax return & save them in several places. 

I also scan and save significant receipts etc. 

I don’t believe you need to keep them. 

OTOH if there’s ever a financial scandal where you need to prove you were effected, those might be the only records in existence as many institutions destroy records after a number of years.  

DullGreyGuy

Businesses will typically hold them for 7 years after the end of the relationship/transaction date as you have 6 years to sue them for breach of contract. You could apply the same logic however the FCA is currently reviewing miss-selling of car finance and now people who are jumping the gun are getting responses from finance companies that they can no longer tell if the finance even ever existed let alone if there was miss-selling. 

Not wanting to jump the gun myself the FCA will have to decide what to do about these now deleted files and potentially it could be impacted by if the customer can evidence anything. 

Personally have been digitising things for years and will inevitably keep things indefinitely as storage gets ever cheaper. 

Bigphil1474

Our company used to keep old paper financial records for 6 years, but obviously not much need these days - they scan and save any paperwork that comes in. 

To me it would depend on what's on them. I was fortunate that I had some paperwork going back over 13 years last year when I started being chased for an old debt that was sorted back in 2010. If I hadn't kept the paperwork, I might have struggled to get them off my back. If your statements are pretty dull, you can either shred or stick in confidential waste - no need to do both. If the CW company are any good, there's no risk to your paperwork. Make sure you have your employers agreement. You could scan any that you think you may need and save them electronically.

YBR

I keep most things for 7-10 years, but in some cases that's 7-10 years after the end of the product (e.g. mortgage), based on HMRC being able to go back 6 years when investigating tax.

I try to keep a full history of P60s as I've heard of people asked to prove a full history of pension/NI contributions.

It may be more convenient to scan and keep electronically, but digital media and formats change relatively rapidly - I am aware that safeguarding records which should be kept for several decades it's advised to keep on paper.

Albermarle

EasyToAssemble01 said:

Not sure if this is the right forum, but I'm struggling to find any exact info online. I'm looking to shred and dispose of old bills, payslips, and statements, but no idea what the maximum time limit should be for keeping them.

Sources online say at least 2-3 years, but never suggest an upper limit. Mine are all around 10 years or older.

Apart from (maybe) proof of residence, I have no particular need for them, so am I OK to dispose of anything 10 years or older? I have a shredder, and also work in an organisation with confidential waste disposal, so am planning to use that.

Not sure if this is the right forum

You are more likely to get better answers on one of these forums ( as this is a DIY one) 
Savings & investments — MoneySavingExpert Forum
Cutting tax — MoneySavingExpert Forum
Budgeting & bank accounts — MoneySavingExpert Forum

tacpot12

Anything that might been needed for tax needs to be kept for 6 years after the relevant tax year. Anything that might show that you claimed benefits correctly needs to be kept indefinitely - the DWP have no time limit to persue you for benefit overpayments!

droopsnoot

I've been trying to prove source of funds for a payment I need to make, and the banks tell me that they're only required to keep statement information for six years, and the online banking for one of them only allows me to directly access back to 2021, the rest need to come by special request. I have some online-only accounts where I didn't download statements, the bank can't or won't produce one for me, so I have to hope that the massive gap in the transaction sequence won't cause me a problem. This experience leads me to want to keep more records, rather than fewer.

EasyToAssemble01

tacpot12 said:

Anything that might been needed for tax needs to be kept for 6 years after the relevant tax year. Anything that might show that you claimed benefits correctly needs to be kept indefinitely - the DWP have no time limit to persue you for benefit overpayments!

This is useful to know, as I briefly claimed JSA twice years ago (once after a redundancy), and still have the paperwork around.