It sits in Part 1 of the Debt Arrangement and Attachment (Scotland) Act 2002 and the Debt Arrangement Scheme (Scotland) Regulations 2011. Both have been amended since, and three of the figures still on display are out of date.

Here is what the scheme actually is, who pays for it, what the freeze covers, and what an approved programme does to enforcement already running against you.

The Accountant in Bankruptcy runs it, acting as the DAS Administrator. The scheme is statutory because approval binds your creditors by force of law rather than by their agreement.

A scheme rather than a product

The Accountant in Bankruptcy is a Scottish Government agency. A Debt Payment Programme is a statutory scheme rather than a product, and the regulations fix the application route whoever lodges it.

Once a programme is approved, section 4(1) of the 2002 Act requires the debts in it to be paid in accordance with the programme. Section 4(2) then makes it incompetent to serve a charge for payment or to commence or execute any diligence for those debts.

You cannot apply on your own

Regulation 7 is headed “Debtor to have an approved money adviser”, and regulation 20(2)(a) requires the application to be made by a money adviser on your behalf in form 1. That is a condition of the scheme rather than a recommendation.

Regulation 20(1) also requires you to be habitually resident in Scotland. Free approved money advice sets out who holds that approval, and for an individual’s programme none of them can charge you a fee.

No. Regulation 21(1) allows an application where the programme provides for the payment of one or more debts, so there is no floor, no ceiling and no minimum number of creditors.

What the scheme does need

It needs disposable income after your essential living costs. The sources set no minimum monthly figure, so ask your adviser what your own budget produces.

Since 29 October 2018 you have been able to propose a proportion of your surplus income rather than all of it, and to offer a lump sum from a future property sale or re-mortgage.

What rules you out

Regulation 21(2) bars an application where you are any of the following.

• Subject to a conjoined arrestment order, apart from the narrow regulation 21(4) exception.
• Party to a protected trust deed.
• Sequestrated or bankrupt and not yet discharged.
• Subject to a bankruptcy restrictions order or undertaking.

Regulation 21(3) adds one more, and it only bites on a single-debt programme. You cannot apply for that one debt if a time to pay direction, a time to pay order or a Consumer Credit Act time order is already running against it.

Nothing. The scheme’s fees come to 22% of every distribution and they are taken out of the creditors’ share, and regulation 17(1)(a) says a payments distributor must make no charge of any kind to a debtor.

Where the 22% goes

Two separate fees make it up, and neither one is added to your debt. The last column gives the answer for each.

You repay 100% of what you owe. Creditors absorb the fee element and, on completion, must write off the sums paid as fees rather than pursuing you for them.

What a paid provider adds

The application route is the same whoever makes it, and for an individual’s programme the money adviser cannot charge a fee. If you are quoted one, ask what it buys before you agree to anything.

Ask for the answer in writing, with the approval the adviser holds beside it. Where to go for help covers the free routes first.

They freeze from the date the application is recorded, not from approval. They cease to be owed if and when the programme completes.

The freeze starts at the application date

Creditors must freeze all interest, fees and charges from the date the application was submitted. That is the Accountant in Bankruptcy’s instruction to creditors, and it covers the weeks while consent is being sought.

The write-off comes from regulation 4(1) of the 2011 interest and charges regulations. Frozen sums are not payable, and they cease to be owed or payable if and when the programme completes.

The word to watch is completes

The same regulation says those sums are not payable unless and until the programme is revoked. So the freeze is conditional, and revocation puts the interest and charges back.

Regulation 42(1)(c) allows revocation where the unpaid sum reaches the aggregate of two payments. The Accountant in Bankruptcy must give at least four weeks’ notice of a proposal to revoke before implementing it.

No. An Individual Voluntary Arrangement belongs to the law of England and Wales and does not exist in Scots law at all, and neither does a Debt Relief Order.

What the Scottish equivalents actually are

The Scottish formal insolvency routes are a protected trust deed and sequestration, which includes the Minimal Asset Process. A Debt Payment Programme is none of those.

The difference is not a matter of naming. DAS repays the debt in full, is not insolvency, and leaves no trustee holding your estate.

It is not a debt management plan either

A debt management plan is informal and not legally binding. The Accountant in Bankruptcy classes it among informal solutions and leaves it out of the statutory debt solutions statistics.

That distinction matters here, because an informal plan does not stop diligence. An earnings arrestment, a bank arrestment or a charge for payment can all proceed while one is running.

Approval operates as a recall of any arrestment of your income or property, and the Accountant in Bankruptcy sends the recall notice to your employer. Your creditor does not have to do anything for that to happen.

The recall is automatic

Regulation 33(1)(a) is the provision, and it covers an earnings arrestment and a bank arrestment alike. Approval itself takes effect from midnight on the day immediately preceding entry of the approval notice in the DAS Register, under regulation 26(2).

Money already taken is credited against the debt and is not usually refunded. Check the position with the creditor.

Our wage arrestment calculator shows what the statutory tables were taking in the meantime.

The gap before approval

Protection under regulation 30(1)(b) runs from the moment the application is entered in the DAS Register. Before that entry there is a gap, so ask your adviser what cover is available while the application is being prepared.

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.

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.

Yes. A material change in your circumstances is a ground for variation under regulation 37(1)(d), and there are two separate payment breaks on top of that.

The two breaks are not the same thing

One is a variation with a statutory trigger. The other is a short term deferral your own adviser can approve.

Until 6 February 2023 the six-month break was confined to a closed list of reasons such as illness or a change of employment. SSI 2023/9 deleted that list, so the test is now the 50% fall itself.

Telling somebody is a condition, not a courtesy

Regulation 27(2)(f) requires you to notify a material change of circumstances within seven days of becoming aware of it. Regulation 27(2)(g) gives you ten days to answer a written request for information about income, assets or liabilities.

Missing payments without applying to vary is what puts a programme at risk. Ask for the variation before the arrears build rather than after.

Creditors are asked to consent and have 21 days to reply. Approval follows automatically where creditors holding not less than nine tenths in value have consented, and where they have not, the Accountant in Bankruptcy must still approve a programme that is fair and reasonable.

Silence counts as consent, with one exception

Regulation 23(5) deems a creditor to consent where it does not respond within 21 days of the request, but only where the programme covers more than one debt. A single-debt programme with no reply goes to the fair and reasonable test instead.

Regulation 25(1) is worded as a duty rather than a discretion. Where the nine tenths threshold is not met, the Administrator must approve a programme that is fair and reasonable, so an objection is not a veto.

Three figures the published regulations still get wrong

The text of SSI 2011/141 displayed on legislation.gov.uk carries a warning about changes not yet applied, and on these three points the displayed wording has been superseded for years.

Your first payment is due within 42 days of approval. A programme is complete when all the payments have been made, or a lump sum equal to the outstanding payments is paid, and the payments distributor then sends a notice of completion.

The Accountant in Bankruptcy’s guidance also provides for an offer of composition after 12 years where 70% of the total debt has been paid, with a creditor who does not reply within 21 days treated as accepting. Official guidance on debt and diligence in Scotland sets out the alternatives.