Are you eligible for a record suspension?

Eligibility for a record suspension comes down to three things: enough time has passed, your sentence is fully complete, and none of your offences are permanent disqualifiers. Here is how each works.

Wait periods by offence type

Under section 4 of the Criminal Records Act, the general wait periods are:

• Summary offences: five years.
• Indictable offences: ten years.

If your record mixes both, the longer period governs the relevant convictions. The point to internalise is that the wait is measured from the end of your sentence, not the date of the offence or the conviction.

The clock-start rule (this is where people get it wrong)

The wait period does not start when you were convicted. It starts only after you have completed the entire sentence — finished any custody, completed probation, and paid all fines, surcharges, and restitution in full.

An outstanding fine is the classic trap: someone counts ten years from their conviction, applies, and discovers the clock never started because a fine was never fully paid.

Permanent disqualifiers

Some records can never be suspended, regardless of how much time passes:

• Certain Schedule 1 offences (primarily sexual offences involving minors, subject to the Act's exceptions).
• Records with three or more indictable offences, each prosecuted by indictment and each carrying a sentence of two or more years.

If you fall into one of these categories, our free check tells you honestly, before you spend anything.

Common misconceptions

• Discharges are not convictions. Absolute and conditional discharges are removed from the automated system after a set period without a record suspension application.
• Withdrawn or dismissed charges are not convictions and generally do not require a suspension.
• "Time served" is not the trigger — full completion of the whole sentence, including money owed, is.

A worked example

Suppose you were convicted of a summary offence, finished probation on 1 June 2020, but did not pay the last of your fine until 1 June 2021. Your five-year clock starts on 1 June 2021, so your earliest eligible date is 1 June 2026 — not 2025 as the conviction date might suggest.

Let the check do the math

Working this out by hand is error-prone, and getting it wrong means a rejected application and a wasted government fee. Our free, anonymous eligibility check computes your earliest eligible date from your dates in about three minutes.