Every case has one of two letter strategies: Context Limited or Contextualised. You can see yours in your case details, under Strategy.
Context Limited
Your letters are built only on the institution's own material: the marker it filed, the letters it has sent you, what its records show, and what its own privacy notice says it does. Each letter tests that material against the Cifas standard of proof.
The standard puts the burden on the institution. It must show that the marker is justified. You do not have to prove that it is not.
What is left out
- Your own account of what happened.
- Supporting evidence. You cannot upload it for the case, and your Evidence page shows a notice instead of documents.
What is still used
- The marker's impact on you, as you recorded it: a refused account, a closed account, or the strain it has caused.
- Evidence of that impact.
What you can still do
- Answer the institution when it asks you for information.
- Upload its responses, your Subject Access Request response and your CIFAS report.
Why new cases start as Context Limited
We looked at how institutions replied to letters across the cases on the platform. The pattern was clear: when a letter gave any context that was not about the marker's impact, the institution's next reply asked for evidence of it. That includes an explanation of what happened, where money came from, or why an account was used the way it was.
Why that matters
A request for evidence changes the case. Instead of the institution showing that its marker meets the standard, you are asked to prove your account. Every answer gives it more material to test, question or quote back to you, and a detail it did not have can fill a gap in its own file.
Why impact is different
Impact describes what the marker has done to you, not what happened before it was filed, so it gives the institution nothing new to investigate. It also bears directly on whether keeping the marker is fair to you, which the institution has to weigh.
Starting as Context Limited keeps the question where it belongs: whether the institution can show, from its own records, what it has recorded about you.
Contextualised
Your letters set out your personal account alongside the legal arguments.
What is used
- Your own account of what happened.
- Supporting evidence. What you upload is analysed and rated, and documents rated "use" can be referenced, as described in how evidence appears in letters.
- The marker's impact on you, and evidence of it.
Which cases use it
- Cases opened before Context Limited was introduced.
In short
Both strategies hold the institution to the same standard: it must show that the marker is justified. What changes is how much your letters give it to work with.
Context Limited gives it only what it already holds, so the burden stays on the institution from the first letter to the last.
