The protections you have at work are procedural rather than locational. The law protects your home by address and your workplace by rules about how the officer behaves.

This page covers what arrives, what may lawfully happen at a workplace, what can be taken from business premises, and what to do about it. How do you stop sheriff officers visiting your home deals with the other address.

An earnings arrestment schedule, served on your employer rather than on you. Section 47(1) of the 1987 Act puts the duty to deduct on the employer, so payroll is where the paperwork goes.

Your employer has no choice about it

Deductions come off net earnings using the Schedule 2 tables in force since 6 April 2025, and monthly net pay of £750.00 or less produces a nil deduction. What an employer’s legal duties are for a wage arrestment sets out the position payroll is in.

Whether the council has to serve a charge for payment on you first where it is using a summary warrant is not settled, so ask a money adviser what applies to your account. When a wage arrestment starts after the paperwork arrives covers the timing.

What arrives, and who it goes to

Only one earnings diligence at a time

Only one diligence against earnings can operate against the same employment at a time, with the exception that a current maintenance arrestment can run alongside an ordinary earnings arrestment. Whether you can have more than one wage arrestment at the same time explains the rest.

Yes. The only locational restrictions in the diligence legislation protect a dwellinghouse, fix the hours in which an attachment may be executed and keep an auction out of the debtor’s home, and there is no equivalent for a workplace.

What the law does restrict, and what it does not

The official functions carry no address limit

Rule 14 of the Act of Sederunt (Messengers-at-Arms and Sheriff Officers Rules) 1991 lists an officer’s official functions as collecting a debt recoverable by decree or summary warrant, executing diligence, and executing a citation or serving a document.

None of those is expressed as being confined to a particular kind of address. What is confined is the sheriffdom, because an officer may practise only where their commission runs.

Why it still rarely happens

The cheaper diligences do not need a visit at all. An earnings arrestment reaches your employer by service on payroll and a bank arrestment reaches your bank, so a council recovering council tax has little reason to send somebody to your office.

A court document, including a charge for payment. The sheriff court rules on service by a sheriff officer treat leaving a document with an employee at a person’s place of business as a recognised method.

Personal service first

Service is ordinarily personal, or by leaving the document in the hands of a resident at the person’s dwelling place or an employee at their place of business. The certificate of service records the full name and designation of anybody the document was left with.

The sealed envelope requirement is a real protection

Where a document is served by being left rather than handed to somebody, the sheriff court rules as amended in April 2011 require a sealed envelope bearing a notice that it contains a citation to or intimation from the sheriff court.

So a charge left loose on a desk, or handed openly to a colleague, is a specific procedural complaint. Can you complain about a sheriff officer’s conduct sets out where that goes.

A pending change that is not law yet

Section 16 of the Bankruptcy and Diligence (Scotland) Act 2024 would allow earnings arrestment schedules to be served by post or electronic transmission. It is not in force and no commencement instrument has brought it in.

Yes, and this is the real exposure for anybody self-employed. Business premises are outwith a dwellinghouse, so ordinary attachment reaches goods there with no court order at all.

How the chain works

Section 10(1) of the Debt Arrangement and Attachment (Scotland) Act 2002 makes attachment a diligence over corporeal moveable property, and section 10(2) confines it to property the debtor owns. Section 14 applies the ordinary procedure to articles kept outwith a dwellinghouse.

Section 10(3) sets three cumulative preconditions. The debtor must have been charged to pay, the period in the charge must have expired without payment, and an individual must have been given a debt advice and information package no earlier than 12 weeks before any step to execute.

Section 15(1) then lets an officer open shut and lockfast places for the purpose of executing an attachment. Read with section 46, that power cannot be used to get inside a dwellinghouse.

What is and is not exempt at a workplace

The two £1,000 caps have applied since 30 December 2002 and are aggregate figures. A working tradesperson’s kit and a usable van will both often be worth more than that.

The household goods list does not help here

The familiar list of protected household items is Schedule 2 to the 2002 Act, and it defines what is not a non-essential asset for the purposes of an exceptional attachment order. It does not apply at a workshop or a unit, and which belongings are protected from sheriff officers explains the difference.

Ownership is a document question

An officer may assume the debtor owns what the debtor possesses, though they must ask anybody present about ownership. An assertion that goods belong to somebody else does not by itself stop an attachment, so keep the paperwork on hand.

That is not the same as being out of reach. The debt is unaffected, and a creditor holding the right authority can use a bank arrestment or attachment instead.

Does a wage arrestment affect self-employed people covers the wider position.

Payroll finds out, because the schedule is served on the employer. Only the people who process your pay need to know, and the deduction shows on your payslip.

Who sees it

The schedule names the creditor and the sum, and payroll has to act on it. Will your colleagues find out about your wage arrestment deals with how far it travels inside an organisation, and does a wage arrestment show on your payslip covers the payslip itself.

Dismissal is a different question

An arrestment is a civil debt matter rather than a disciplinary one. Can your employer sack you for having a wage arrestment takes that on directly.

The employer’s own charge

An employer may take £1 from you on each pay day on which a deduction is made. The power is in section 71 of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 and the figure was prescribed by regulation 3 of SSI 2006/116, in force 5 April 2006.

It comes off after the Schedule 2 deduction has been worked out, so it never reduces what the creditor receives. It is permissive rather than compulsory.

Ask, in writing, and give an alternative. There is no statutory right to insist, but a firm that has a written address and phone number for you has no reason to try anywhere else.

What to send

• A letter or email to the sheriff officer firm giving your home address, a phone number and an email address, and asking that contact goes there.
• The same to the council, quoting the account and the reference on the officer’s paperwork.
• A note of what you have proposed about the debt, because a firm in contact with you has less reason to look for you.

Conduct at a workplace is complainable

Conduct tending to bring the office of sheriff officer into disrepute is misconduct under section 79(9) of the 1987 Act, and behaviour at somebody’s place of work can fall within it. The route runs through the complaint procedure to the sheriff principal.

Get an adviser to make the contact

A money adviser dealing with the firm on your behalf usually ends doorstep contact faster than anything you can send yourself. Where to go for help to stop a wage arrestment lists the free services.

Through one of the statutory routes, because there is no hardship application against an ordinary earnings arrestment. A sheriff cannot reduce a Schedule 2 deduction on affordability grounds.

The routes that work

An approved programme under the Debt Arrangement Scheme stops an existing earnings arrestment and freezes interest, fees and charges. Sequestration ends one on the date of sequestration and a protected trust deed on the date of protection.

A statutory moratorium is the exception. It does not stop an earnings arrestment that was already running: section 197(5)(d) of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016 lets a creditor carry on executing an earnings arrestment, a current maintenance arrestment or a conjoined arrestment order that came into effect before the moratorium began.

A Time to Pay Order is competent on summary warrant debt where the sum outstanding is £25,000 or less excluding interest, a limit in force since 10 July 2000. What a Time to Pay Order is covers the application, and our council tax debt advice page sets out how we help.

And the earlier you move, the more there is to work with

For a self-employed reader in particular, the moment to act is before a charge for payment expires. Once it has, ordinary attachment at business premises becomes available without any further application to a court.