Advice for a newbie please

RAS

As fermi says if you have not paid or otherwise acknowledged the debt for 6 years or more this debt is statute barred.

It still exists and it is acceptable for a DCA to ask you to pay , ONCE, but they cannot take yo to court or mark you credit record.

Once you write to the DCA and tell them you are not going to pay, it is against OFT Guidelines for the creditor to make any further attempt to pursue the debt.

What happens is that some DCAs specialise in buying very old debts for a pittance and then chase debtor aggressively in the hope of getting the whole sum out of them before they understand the legal situation. they only need a low hit rate to make it profitable.