Every stage has a rule attached to it, and some of those rules work in your favour. This guide follows the process from decree to final deduction, using the Schedule 2 tables in the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 that were in force in August 2026.

Still working out what the line on your payslip is? Our guide to what a wage arrestment is covers the basics.

A creditor needs enforceable authority first. For most debts that means a court decree and an expired charge for payment, and for council tax a summary warrant from the sheriff court.

The stage-by-stage timeline

There is no national timetable, because how fast a creditor moves is up to them. The stages always run in this order, though.

The ordinary court route

A creditor raises a court action, obtains decree, then instructs sheriff officers to serve a charge for payment under s.90 of the 1987 Act.

Once the 14 days on that charge run out, the creditor can execute diligence.

See which creditors can apply for a wage arrestment and what debts can lead to a wage arrestment for who gets this far, and on what.

The council tax route

Council tax skips most of that. The council applies to the sheriff court for a summary warrant, and there is no hearing and no chance to argue liability at that point.

A 10% statutory surcharge is added when the warrant is granted, under the Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) (Scotland) Regulations 1992. The council can then move straight to an earnings arrestment without serving a charge for payment at all.

Our council tax billing and collection guide sets out the notices that should have reached you first.

Your employer has to operate the arrestment from the first pay period after the schedule is served. Refusing makes them liable for the sums they should have deducted, so payroll has little room to help you.

What payroll can and cannot do

• They can tell you who the creditor is and give you a copy of the schedule.
• They can confirm the figure they are deducting and show you the calculation.
• They can correct a genuine arithmetic error.
• They cannot reduce the deduction because you have asked them to.
• They cannot stop it without an instruction from the creditor or the court.

Your employer may also take £1.00 per deduction as an administration charge. That pound is theirs, and it does not reduce your debt.

What the code on your payslip means

The deduction shows as its own line, usually under a short label. Scotland has seven forms of wage deduction in all, and only one of them is an earnings arrestment.

An attachment of earnings order is not on that list. It is an English and Welsh instrument and it does not apply in Scotland.

Where several land on one payroll, the priority orders go first: a CMS deduction from earnings order, a conjoined arrestment order, an earnings arrestment and a current maintenance arrestment. A direct earnings attachment sits below them, as the DWP’s employer guide confirms.

The 60% of net pay floor people quote belongs to a direct earnings attachment or a CMS order. There is no percentage cap at all on a Scottish earnings arrestment.

If the naming has confused you, the difference between a wage arrestment and an earnings arrestment explains why the two terms describe the same thing.

The deduction is worked out from your net earnings for that pay period using the statutory tables. Net means after tax, National Insurance and pension contributions.

The current tables were substituted into Schedule 2 by the Diligence against Earnings (Variation) (Scotland) Regulations 2024, in force since 6 April 2025. No uprating followed in April 2026, so they still applied in August 2026.

Plenty of pages still show figures that were replaced on 6 April 2025, so a number you find elsewhere may be out of date.

Monthly deduction table, from 6 April 2025

A worked example

Say your net pay is £1,800 a month. That sits in the third band, so the sum is £112.50 plus 20% of the £300 above £1,500, which gives £172.50 a month.

The protected slice is covered in protected earnings limits, and the bands above it in how much can they take from your wages.

What that looks like on real pay, and how many paydays it runs

Read your figure off this table rather than working the percentages out yourself. The last two columns turn the deduction into a number of paydays.

Those counts assume the balance stands still. Sheriff officer fees are added to what you owe, and on council tax so is the 10% surcharge.

Weekly, daily and fortnightly pay

Weekly pay uses Table A, where nothing is taken from net earnings of £172.61 or less. Net weekly pay of £400 produces £25.89 plus 20% of £54.78, so £36.85 a week.

Daily pay uses Table C, with a nil threshold of £24.66 a day. There is no fortnightly table in the statute.

Fortnightly pay is normally handled using the daily table, or by applying the weekly table to each week in the period. Your employer follows its own payroll guidance.

Calculations run to two decimal places of a penny and round to the nearest penny, with an exact half-penny rounding down. Our wage arrestment calculator guide runs the same maths on your own numbers.

All of them change it, because the tables key off your actual net earnings in each pay period rather than your salary. A quiet month produces a smaller deduction and a bonus month a bigger one.

Sick pay and statutory sick pay

Sick pay run through payroll is still pay, so it still goes through the calculation. Drop onto statutory sick pay, though, and your net earnings fall a long way.

If they land at or below £750 a month, or £172.61 a week, the deduction for that period is nil. Each pay period is assessed on its own net earnings.

Bonuses, overtime and commission

These push you up the bands for that pay period only. A month with a bonus in it is assessed on the whole net figure, bonus included.

The jump can be sharp, because the top band takes 50% of everything above £3,750 in the month. The next period goes back to normal, since the tables do not average across the year.

Two jobs at the same time

The one-at-a-time rule bites on each employment separately. Only one diligence against earnings can run against one employer, but a creditor can serve a second schedule on a second employer.

So two jobs can carry two deductions, each worked out on that job’s own net pay. Neither calculation knows about the other.

If you change employer part-way through

An earnings arrestment falls with the employment it was served on, and does not follow you to a new job by itself.

The creditor has to trace where you now work and serve a fresh schedule. The debt is untouched in the meantime, so nothing is written off by moving job.

There is no fixed end date, and it runs payday after payday until the debt, expenses and any surcharge are cleared. Payroll only stops when somebody with authority tells it to.

Who actually gives the stop instruction

Payroll does not hold the running balance, so they have no way of knowing when the last penny has been paid.

The instruction has to come from the creditor or their sheriff officers, or from a court order recalling the arrestment. Until one lands, payroll keeps deducting.

So watch the balance yourself and ask payroll for a written note of every payment they have sent.

Three things end an arrestment in practice.

• The balance, expenses and any surcharge are paid, by the deductions or a lump sum.
• A statutory debt solution or a court recall brings it to an end.
• You leave that employment, and the arrestment falls with the job.

An approved Debt Payment Programme, a protected trust deed or sequestration can all stop an earnings arrestment. So can a Time to Pay Order.

Breathing space and the statutory solutions

A Debt Payment Programme under the Debt Arrangement Scheme stops an existing earnings arrestment once it is approved, and freezes interest and charges while you repay.

A protected trust deed ends one on the date of protection under s.173 of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016, not on the day you sign.

Sequestration ends one on the date of sequestration, under s.72(2) of the 1987 Act. That happens automatically, and the Minimal Asset Process counts as sequestration for this purpose.

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 arrestment your employer is already operating is treated differently in the Accountant in Bankruptcy’s adviser guidance from the general rule. Ask a money adviser to confirm.

Money already deducted before any of those takes effect is credited against the debt rather than refunded, so check the position with the creditor.

Time to Pay Orders, including on council tax

A Time to Pay Order is competent against council tax collected by summary warrant, which surprises almost everybody. Where the sheriff grants one, the sheriff must recall any existing earnings arrestment.

That recall is mandatory, while for other diligence the sheriff only has a power to recall or restrict. The balance has to be £25,000 or less, excluding interest.

A Time to Pay Direction is a different thing, and it is not available on summary warrant debt. It is also unsettled whether an earnings arrestment alone satisfies s.5(1)(b), so ask a money adviser or the sheriff clerk whether an application is competent on your facts.

For council tax, a special payment arrangement is often the quicker conversation, and our council tax debt advice page sets out what a council can agree to.

The Accountant in Bankruptcy is the statutory body behind the Debt Arrangement Scheme, the moratorium and sequestration.

In an ordinary earnings arrestment your employer sends the deduction straight to the creditor or their sheriff officers. Under a conjoined arrestment order it goes to the sheriff clerk instead.

The ordinary route

Payroll pays the sum over to whoever served the schedule, usually a sheriff officer firm acting for the creditor. None of it passes through the court.

Conjoined arrestment orders

Only one diligence against earnings can operate against the same employment at a time. A second creditor cannot stack a schedule on top, so they apply to the sheriff for a conjoined arrestment order under Part III of the 1987 Act.

The employer then makes one deduction and sends it to the sheriff clerk. The clerk splits it between the creditors named in the order.

There is one exception. A current maintenance arrestment can run alongside an ordinary earnings arrestment, with its own protected daily rate of £24.66.