Hi all,

My partner and I are currently applying for a mortgage via Barclays. It's well below our upper limit and both of us have good credit scores (both the same at 977/1000 on Experian and above average on Equifax) so we went in confident of it being accepted.

However, there is a discrepancy on my payslip that Barclays are questioning.

Quite a few years ago, I went through a rough patch and got myself in to some debt, obviously I've worked hard since to get myself out of that and everything I owed is now paid off. However, at that time, I was issued with a CCJ and had an attachment to earnings order. So each month, a certain amount would go from my payslip to pay this debt. Eventually (a couple of years ago) the debt was settled and because the CCJ is so old, it no longer appears on my credit report.

However, the pay team where I work listed this payment as a "court order" on my payslip, and have never removed that line (to be fair, I should have chased them about this earlier, but as it never affected anything, didn't bother - hindsight is a fine thing). The debt was settled when there was still £115 remaining to be paid, so my payslip reads -

COURT ORDER: Paid this month: £0, YTD: £115.

I haven't actually paid £115 this year, but the way they formatted my payslip meant that the YTD column was used to count down the remaining balance, rather than show how much has been paid.

Barclays have picked up on this and questioned it so now our Mortgage Advisor is asking me to provide the exact date the CCJ was registered, how much it was for and the exact date is was settled.

Problem is, I have none of that information - I've also looked on Trust Online and done some searches and nothing appears registered against me at multiple addresses. Also, if I'm honest, I feel like this info shouldn't necessarily need to be declared to Barclays anyway as this isn't on my credit file anymore... My preference would be to provide more payslips to show that no payments have been made in the last year, or to provide a letter from my pay department, stating that it was a mistake and should be removed.

So I guess 2 questions..

1) How bad does this look for our mortgage application?
2) Am I being unreasonable in not wanting to declare very old debt to Barclays for consideration towards a financial decision based on our current standing?

Thanks in advance.