This guide takes the second question seriously, setting out every route that removes the reason for the visits, who decides each one, and what it does to diligence already running.

If officers are outside your house as you read this, start with what to do if sheriff officers knock on your door and come back here afterwards.

The creditor withdrawing the instruction, which happens when the debt is paid, covered by an arrangement the creditor accepts, or protected by a statutory route. Closing the door ends one visit rather than the instruction behind it.

Two questions that keep getting answered as one

Stopping a visit is about the doorstep. Stopping enforcement is about the debt, and only the second one makes the officers go away for good.

You are entitled to keep the door shut, and our guide to whether you have to let sheriff officers in covers what that choice does and does not achieve.

Who you actually need to deal with

Sheriff officers act on a creditor’s instructions, and for council tax that creditor is your council. The firms Scottish councils instruct include Scott & Co, Stirling Park, Walker Love and Alex M Adamson.

The firm cannot write off what it does not own, so speak to the creditor as well and put whatever you agree in writing.

Why the paperwork decides which route is open

For council tax the council holds a summary warrant, granted by the sheriff court on its application supported by a certificate, with no hearing and a 10% statutory surcharge added to the outstanding council tax.

The route to that point sits in the Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) (Scotland) Regulations 1992. For an ordinary consumer debt the creditor instead holds a court decree obtained after a court action.

Which document exists changes what you can ask a court for, so dig out every letter before you pick a route.

Seven of them: paying or settling, an arrangement with the creditor, a Time to Pay Order, an approved Debt Payment Programme, a protected trust deed, sequestration and a statutory moratorium. They differ in who decides, how fast they bite and what they do to diligence already running.

The routes side by side

Read the last column first if something is already coming off your wages. That is where the routes genuinely part company.

None of these is automatic, and each has consequences beyond the doorstep. A free money adviser can tell you which ones your circumstances reach.

Paying or settling the balance

Paying in full is the fastest route, and it is not open to everyone. Ask the creditor to confirm in writing that the account is settled and the instruction withdrawn.

Payments on council tax are normally allocated to the oldest year of arrears first unless you say otherwise. Put it in writing if you want a payment credited elsewhere.

An arrangement with the council or the creditor

Where council tax is behind the visits, the conversation to ask for is a special payment arrangement covering the arrears, rather than your old instalments back.

Reinstating instalments after a final notice is at the council’s discretion rather than a right. Our council tax debt advice page and our billing and collection guide set out how the bill and the arrears are treated separately.

Work out an affordable figure before you ring, because an arrangement that survives beats a larger one that collapses. Our guide to negotiating a payment arrangement covers what to have in front of you.

Yes. A Time to Pay Order is competent against a summary warrant, and where the sheriff grants one the sheriff must recall any existing earnings arrestment.

The Order and the Direction are different things

A Time to Pay Direction is applied for inside a court action, before decree. It is not available against summary warrant debt, because a direction responds to a court action and there is none here.

A Time to Pay Order is the post-decree route, and it does reach a summary warrant. Both sit in the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987, and the two are easily mixed up because the names are so close.

What a granted Order does to diligence already running

Recall of an existing earnings arrestment is mandatory under s.9(2)(a) rather than a matter for the sheriff’s judgement. For other diligence the sheriff only may recall or restrict.

The debt outstanding has to be £25,000 or less excluding interest. The test the sheriff applies is what is reasonable in all the circumstances.

Checking it is competent on your facts

It is not settled whether an earnings arrestment on its own satisfies the s.5(1)(b) conditions, so treat this as a route to check rather than an entitlement. A money adviser or the sheriff clerk at your local sheriff court can confirm whether an application is competent for you.

An application is also not competent once certain diligences are well advanced, so ask early. Our guide to stopping a wage arrestment goes through the same routes from the payslip end.

An approved Debt Payment Programme stops an existing earnings arrestment and prevents creditors starting new diligence, so the reason for calling disappears. A statutory moratorium buys six months of protection while you get a longer answer in place.

An approved Debt Payment Programme

The Debt Arrangement Scheme is statutory, administered by the Accountant in Bankruptcy through the DAS Administrator, and you repay in full over an agreed period.

Interest, fees and charges are frozen and written off on completion. It is not an insolvency solution.

Council tax arrears can go into a programme. Your current-year liability cannot, so that bill still has to be paid alongside.

The statutory moratorium

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 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.

Use the six months to put a longer answer in place rather than to wait. Our guide to where to go for help lists the free services that can apply for one on your behalf.

Yes, but each bites on a specific date you should know before you sign anything. A trust deed takes effect on the date of protection, and sequestration on the date of sequestration.

The date of protection, not the date of signing

Under s.173 of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016, a protected trust deed ends an existing earnings arrestment on protection, and no new one can be executed afterwards for the included debts.

Between signing and protection you are still exposed. A statutory moratorium is normally run alongside to cover that gap.

Sequestration and the Minimal Asset Process

On the date of sequestration an existing earnings arrestment ceases to have effect automatically, with no application needed. The Minimal Asset Process counts here, because it is a form of sequestration.

Creditors cannot then execute a new earnings arrestment for debts claimable in it, and the deduction is replaced by a Debtor Contribution Order.

What happens to money already taken

Anything deducted before the relevant date is credited against the debt rather than refunded to you. Our wage arrestment calculator shows what a month of delay is worth in cash terms.

Deductions come off net pay under Schedule 2 to the 1987 Act, on the tables substituted by the Diligence against Earnings (Variation) (Scotland) Regulations 2024 and in force since 6 April 2025. Net monthly pay of £1,700.00 gives £152.50, and £2,400.00 gives £292.50.

Those figures are fixed by statute, so only displacing the arrestment changes them.

No. An earnings arrestment and a bank arrestment need no visit, no entry and no consent at all, so a closed door protects your possessions and nothing else.

What needs a visit and what does not

This is the table that makes the doorstep look smaller than it feels. Most of what a creditor can do happens somewhere you are not standing.

An earnings arrestment schedule goes to your employer, and a bank arrestment is executed at the bank. Neither asks your permission.

Where council tax is collected under a summary warrant, the council can move to an earnings arrestment without first serving a charge for payment.

What a closed door does protect

It protects the contents of your home, and that protection is already strong. Sheriff officers cannot force entry for ordinary council tax arrears, and forced entry is only available under an exceptional attachment order granted by a sheriff.

Ordinary attachment reaches only goods outside a dwelling, such as items in a garden or on a driveway. The front door is a real line, though a narrower one than the word attachment suggests.

That is a complaint rather than a debt question, and it has its own route. It goes to the firm first, then to the Society of Messengers-at-Arms and Sheriff Officers, then to the sheriff principal.

The complaints ladder

Work through it in order, because each stage expects the one before it to have been tried. Put every stage in writing.

Sheriff officers are regulated under the Act of Sederunt (Messengers-at-Arms and Sheriff Officers Rules) 1991, and SMASO maintains a code of practice for the profession. They are officers of the court rather than bailiffs, so the ladder ends at the sheriff principal.

What a complaint changes and what it does not

A complaint deals with conduct rather than with the debt itself. The routes that displace enforcement are the ones in the table above.

Fees are set by an Act of Sederunt and added to what you owe, so they are not something the firm decides. Our guide to the powers sheriff officers have sets out where the authority starts and stops.

Keeping a record that is worth something

Note the date of every contact, who called and what was said. Ask in writing for future contact to be in writing.

Conduct you are unhappy with is worth raising specifically, because a complaint goes to behaviour rather than to the amount owed.