The whole fee structure changes on 25 September 2026. Below, every figure is given twice, with the date attached to each.

One thing first. The 10% on a council tax balance is added by your council when the summary warrant is granted, before any officer is instructed.

For an earnings arrestment, the expenses of the charge and of serving the schedule come out of what is taken from your wages and cannot be pursued separately, under section 93(1) of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987. For a bank arrestment, section 93(2) takes them out of the arrested funds instead.

Where the arrested funds do not cover them, the court grants decree for the balance of those expenses in the action of furthcoming.

What section 93(1) does

It makes those expenses recoverable by the diligence itself rather than by any other legal process. The provision sits in the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 alongside the rest of the earnings arrestment machinery.

They cannot be pursued by any other legal process, so they are collected through the same deductions that collect the debt.

When they stop being chargeable, and when they do not

Expenses not recovered by the time the diligence has completed cease to be chargeable, but section 93(5) carries an exception. Where the diligence ends because of a time to pay order, sequestration, a protected trust deed or a conjoined arrestment order, expenses already chargeable stay chargeable unless that route itself discharges them.

Ask a money adviser what happens to the fees on your own account.

Ask for a statement of account showing what has been added and when. What fees sheriff officers can charge sets out the table those charges come from.

The order the layers arrive in

Only the third row is a sheriff officer charge. The second is the council’s, and the fourth never reaches the balance at all.

They are set by an Act of Sederunt, which is a form of court rule, and no firm sets its own rate for statutory work. The same act costs the same whichever firm your creditor instructs.

Officers of the court, not bailiffs

Sheriff officers are appointed by and accountable to the sheriff, and they work under the Act of Sederunt (Messengers-at-Arms and Sheriff Officers Rules) 1991. What powers sheriff officers have sets out what they can and cannot do.

Bailiffs and High Court Enforcement Officers work in England and Wales under different law and a different fee structure. Whether sheriff officers are the same as bailiffs covers the difference.

Which firm holds your account

The letterhead tells you. Scottish councils instruct firms including Scott & Co, Stirling Park, Walker Love and Alex M Adamson.

Deal with whoever holds the account. Why Scott and Co are contacting you covers what a letter from a firm means.

The whole fee structure changes on 25 September 2026. The Act of Sederunt (Fees of Messengers-at-Arms and Sheriff Officers) 2026 revokes the 2002 instruments and charges in units instead of fixed sums.

The instrument, and what it replaces

The Act of Sederunt (Fees of Messengers-at-Arms and Sheriff Officers) 2026 was made on 17 June 2026 and comes into force on 25 September 2026. It revokes the 2002 sheriff officer fees instrument and its whole chain of amendments.

That chain includes the 2024 instrument which substituted the table in force since 22 March 2024. One consolidated instrument replaces the lot.

The figure a wage arrestment debtor actually meets

Serving a document on one person at one address is 18 units, so £109.80 at the opening unit value, against £96.27 under the table it replaces.

There is no line item anywhere called earnings arrestment. The table of fees is organised by the act the officer performs, and on the ordinary reading serving a schedule falls within service of a document, because no other row applies.

What a unit is worth, and when that moves

Those values are set on the face of the new instrument, and no value is stated for any date after 1 April 2028.

Which table applies to your account

The test is the date the work was carried out. It is not the date of instruction, the date of the decree or the date a fee note is rendered.

Work done on or before 24 September 2026 is charged under the old instruments, and work done on or after the 25th under the new one. A single instruction spanning the changeover is split by reference to when each piece of work was done.

No. It is a statutory addition applied by the council when the sheriff court grants the summary warrant, before any sheriff officer is instructed.

Where the 10% comes from

A 10% statutory addition goes onto the outstanding council tax on grant of the warrant, and the same addition applies to non-domestic rates.

It goes on once, at that stage. How much the 10% is sets out how it is calculated.

Two separate layers, in sequence

The addition attaches first, at the warrant stage. Fees come later, once a firm is instructed and starts doing work on the account.

No. Your employer may take £1.00 per deduction as an administration charge, and it comes out of your pay on top of the arrested amount rather than out of it.

Where that pound goes

It goes to your employer for operating the arrestment, and does not reach the creditor, the sheriff officers or your balance.

What does reduce the balance

Only the arrested amount itself, worked out from your net earnings under the Schedule 2 tables in force since 6 April 2025. Why an arrestment can take more than you expected covers the rest of what shows on a payslip.

Additions include reasonable outlays and VAT on top of the fee, and a surcharge for work carried out outside normal business hours of 9.00am to 5.00pm.

How the surcharge is dated

Until 24 September 2026 that is an uplift of a third for work between 5.00pm and 10.00pm on a weekday and three quarters for work after 10.00pm, before 9.00am, or at any time on a Saturday, Sunday or public holiday. From 25 September 2026 a new instrument sets the surcharges, so ask the firm which rate has been applied and to which date.

Where VAT sits

Under the table in force until 24 September 2026, VAT is charged on top of the fee rather than included in it. The 2026 instrument again charges VAT on top where the officer is a taxable person, subject to a qualification in its VAT provision we have not been able to confirm.

So ask for VAT to be shown separately on the fee note.

What the new instrument keeps and what it quantifies

It keeps a structure of surcharges, outlays and VAT on top of the table charge. It also quantifies a surcharge for service in a remote rural area, defined by reference to the Scottish Government’s Urban Rural Classification 2022.

A remote rural uplift existed before, but no consolidated text put a figure on it.

Under the new instrument the reduction for low-value work expressly does not reach summary warrant recovery, so council tax work is charged at the full rate. That was already the position in practice, and the 2026 instrument says it in terms rather than leaving it to be read out of the residual column.

So for council tax recovery the full rate applies rather than a reduced one.

One change that runs the other way

The percentage scales on attachment go, which cuts the charge sharply on a high appraised value.

Ask the firm named on your paperwork, in writing, for a statement of account. Ask for the original sum, every addition, every fee with the step and date it relates to, and every payment credited.

What to ask for, line by line

• The original sum and the period or account it relates to.
• The amount of any statutory addition and the date it went on.
• Each fee, what step it relates to, and the date it was charged.
• Every payment or deduction received and the date it was credited.
• The current balance, and whether interest is being applied to it.

Check the deductions have landed

Keep your payslips and compare them against the statement. If a deduction you can see on a payslip is not credited on the statement, ask the firm to account for it.

If a fee does not match a step you can identify, raise it with the firm first, then with the Society of Messengers-at-Arms and Sheriff Officers, then with the sheriff principal. The Scottish courts publish the court structure behind that.

What a fee query does not do

Section 47(2) is what brings an arrestment to an end, and a query is not on that list. If the money coming out is the real problem, deal with that at the same time rather than afterwards.

Further enforcement steps are what generate further enforcement fees, so a route that stops the enforcement stops those. Some routes freeze interest, fees and charges outright.

The routes that do that

• An approved Debt Payment Programme under the Debt Arrangement Scheme, where interest, fees and charges are frozen while it runs and written off on completion.
• A statutory moratorium, giving six months of protection from diligence, one per rolling 12 months.
• A time to pay order, where the debt outstanding is £25,000 or less excluding interest. If the sheriff grants one, the sheriff must recall any existing earnings arrestment, though it is not settled whether an earnings arrestment on its own opens the door to an application, so ask a money adviser or the sheriff clerk whether one is competent on your facts.
• Sequestration, the Minimal Asset Process or a protected trust deed, each of which ends an existing arrestment by statute.

Where to get that looked at

Our guide to the Debt Arrangement Scheme sets out what an approved programme does, and whether an arrestment can be stopped once it has started compares the routes.

The Accountant in Bankruptcy publishes guidance on each statutory solution, and our council tax debt advice page covers what to put in an offer to a council.