Below is a before and after table for every route, the payday each one bites from, and what happens to money already taken. If the size of the deduction is still a mystery, our wage arrestment calculator shows what the statutory tables produce on your net pay.

Six things end a live earnings arrestment: an approved Debt Payment Programme, a protected trust deed, sequestration, a Time to Pay Order, clearing the balance, and leaving that employment. A statutory moratorium sits alongside them as cover rather than an ending.

The six endings

• An approved Debt Payment Programme, where approval operates as a recall.
• A protected trust deed, on the date of protection rather than the date you signed.
• Sequestration, including Minimal Asset Process, on the date of sequestration.
• A Time to Pay Order, where the sheriff grants one and recalls the arrestment.
• The balance being cleared, expenses and any surcharge included.
• The end of that employment, because the arrestment falls with the job.

What does not end it

A phone call explaining that the deduction is unaffordable has no legal effect on diligence. Neither does a promise to pay more later.

Your employer has no discretion either, because operating the schedule is a legal duty under the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 and refusing to comply makes the employer liable for the sums that should have been deducted.

That does not make the conversation pointless. Councils and sheriff officer firms sometimes agree arrangements, and a written record of your attempts is worth keeping.

Most routes do both, but not all of them. The table below splits the answer into stopping an arrestment before it reaches your employer and lifting one already coming off your wages.

Before it reaches payroll, and after it has started

The insolvency routes work on both sides, which is why a trust deed stopping a wage arrestment gets quoted so often.

Why the moratorium row is the odd one out

A statutory moratorium gives six months of protection and you get one per rolling 12 months. It stops service of a charge for payment, stops new diligence and stops creditor petitions for sequestration.

It is applied for through the Accountant in Bankruptcy, usually by a money adviser.

It does not stop a creditor obtaining a decree, and interest and charges keep accruing throughout.

Whether a creditor can carry on an earnings arrestment your employer is already operating is treated differently in the Accountant in Bankruptcy’s adviser guidance from the general statement of the rule. Ask a money adviser to confirm the position on your facts before relying on it.

Treat it as cover while a longer route is arranged, rather than as a switch that clears your payslip.

The route that never applies to wages

The unduly harsh application under ss.73Q and 73R is a bank arrestment power. It reaches money in an account, including funds arrested by a council, and it has nothing to say about earnings.

Anyone pointing you at it as a hardship route against wages has read the wrong section.

Each route has a fixed trigger date, and none of them is the day you walk into an advice office. Deductions keep coming out of your wages while an application is being processed, and that gap is the expensive part.

That gap has a price. On monthly net pay of £1,800.00 the deduction is £172.50, so three paydays spent waiting costs £517.50, and how much they can take from your wages sets the figure in your own band.

The trigger date for each route

The Debt Arrangement Scheme, on approval

Approval of a Debt Payment Programme under the Debt Arrangement Scheme operates as a recall of any arrestment of your income, and the recall notice goes to your employer. The creditor does not have to act for that to happen.

Approval takes effect from midnight on the day before the notice goes on the DAS Register. Interest, fees and charges are frozen from the date the application is recorded.

Creditors get the chance to respond first, so there is a real gap between applying and approval. Our guide to whether a Debt Arrangement Scheme stops a wage arrestment covers that window.

A trust deed, on the date of protection

A protected trust deed ends an earnings arrestment under s.173 of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016, and the trigger is the date the deed is registered in the Register of Insolvencies.

Signing is not protection. Creditors get five weeks from publication of the notice to object, the trustee then has four weeks to apply to register it, and the decision follows that.

Your employer keeps deducting through every one of those steps. That exposure is exactly why a statutory moratorium is normally run alongside a trust deed.

Sequestration, on the date of sequestration

An existing earnings arrestment ceases to have effect on the date of sequestration under s.72(2) of the 1987 Act, automatically and with no application needed. Minimal Asset Process counts as sequestration here, and the arrestment is replaced by a Debtor Contribution Order.

A Time to Pay Order, on the sheriff’s mandatory recall

Where the sheriff court makes a Time to Pay Order, s.9(2)(a) says the sheriff shall recall any existing earnings arrestment. For other diligence the sheriff only may recall, so wages are treated differently.

An Order is applied for after decree and is competent against a summary warrant, so council tax arrears are in scope. A Time to Pay Direction is the pre-decree version and is not available against a summary warrant, because a direction responds to a court action.

The balance has to be £25,000 or less excluding interest, and the test is what is reasonable in all the circumstances. It is not settled whether an earnings arrestment alone satisfies s.5(1)(b), so do not assume an entitlement.

A money adviser or the sheriff clerk can confirm whether an application is competent on your facts. Our council tax debt advice page covers what a council considers alongside it.

Money correctly deducted before any of those dates is credited against the debt rather than refunded to you. It reduces the balance, so it is not lost, but it is not coming back into your bank account.

Check the closing balance with the creditor, because it should show every deduction taken as a credit against what you owe.

Credited, not refunded

Every payday of delay is money you do not see again, which is the argument for getting the first day after the notice arrives right.

When a refund is a fair ask

Over-deduction is different. If payroll used gross pay, the wrong pay frequency table, or kept deducting after the debt cleared, that is an error to raise in writing.

Ask for the calculation, the pay period used and the running balance. The bands themselves come from the Diligence against Earnings (Variation) (Scotland) Regulations 2024, in force since 6 April 2025, so payroll has no room to pick a figure.

The £1.00 that never touches the debt

Your employer may take £1.00 for each deduction as an administration charge. It comes out of your pay on top of the arrested sum and reduces the balance by nothing.

Only on narrow grounds. Section 50 gives a declarator that the arrestment is invalid or has ceased to have effect, or a determination of a dispute about how it is operated, and neither is an affordability ground.

What s.50 actually gives you

Section 50(1) is the declarator route, used where the arrestment is invalid or has ceased to have effect. Section 50(3) covers a dispute about how it is being operated.

There is no time limit on either. What does not exist is an application saying the deduction leaves you short.

A sheriff cannot reduce a Schedule 2 deduction because you cannot afford it, whatever your outgoings look like. If the figure itself looks wrong, challenging a wage arrestment you think is wrong is the route that fits.

What is worth checking before you accept the figure

• The deduction against the statutory table for your pay frequency, using net pay for that period.
• Whether more than one diligence is running against the same employment, which is not competent.
• A written breakdown from the sheriff officer firm showing the debt, the expenses and any 10% summary warrant surcharge separately.

Two things end it with no application at all: the balance being cleared, and you leaving that job. The second one stops the deductions without touching a penny of the debt.

When the balance runs out

Your employer stops once the debt, the expenses and any surcharge have been collected, which is why how long a wage arrestment lasts is really your balance divided by your deduction.

Ask for a written settlement figure rather than a number over the phone. On council tax the 10% surcharge has to be collected too.

When you leave that employer

An earnings arrestment falls with the employment it was served on, and does not follow you to a new employer. Deductions stop with your final payslip from that job.

The creditor then has to trace where you work now and serve a fresh schedule, so this buys a gap rather than an ending.

The balance is untouched, and expenses can keep it growing. Where the creditor is your council, a special payment arrangement sometimes persuades it to call the sheriff officers off instead.

When the creditor simply recalls it

A creditor can instruct the sheriff officers to stop, and some do once an arrangement is agreed. It is their decision rather than your right.

Gather your last two payslips, the creditor paperwork and a rough list of income and outgoings. An adviser can then tell you which route is open to you and how many paydays it takes to bite.

The three things to have in front of you

• Two recent payslips showing the arrested sum and the £1.00 charge as separate lines.
• A written balance broken down into debt, expenses and any surcharge.
• A copy of the schedule from payroll, so you know which creditor is behind it, plus guidance on debt and decrees if payroll disagrees with your reading of the table.

Where to get this looked at for free

Citizens Advice Scotland, StepChange, Money Advice Scotland, National Debtline and Advice Direct Scotland all deal with arrestments daily, and most councils run a money advice team as well.

None of them charge you, and one appointment opens every route on this page.