What the routes below do is displace the arrestment altogether, each on its own date. That distinction is the whole of the decision.

Here is what each route does to deductions already running, what rules each one in or out, and what does not work at all. Our guide to stopping a wage arrestment covers the steps once you have chosen.

No. The deduction is set by a statutory table applied to your net earnings for that pay period, and there is no affordability or hardship route against an earnings arrestment.

The arithmetic is fixed

Net monthly pay of £750.00 or less produces no deduction at all, on the Schedule 2 tables in force since 6 April 2025 under SSI 2024/293. Our wage arrestment calculator runs your own figure and how much they can take sets out the bands.

Your employer applies the table and has no discretion in it. Neither does the creditor.

The only review power, and what it does not contain

Sections 73Q and 73R of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 reach arrestments attaching funds or moveable property, so the unduly harsh route belongs to a bank arrestment. What an unduly harsh application is covers that route properly.

Against an earnings arrestment the only power is section 50, which gives a declarator that the arrestment is invalid or has ceased to have effect, or a determination of a dispute about its operation. Neither limb contains an affordability ground.

Four statutory routes displace one: a Time to Pay Order, an approved Debt Payment Programme, a protected trust deed and sequestration, which includes the Minimal Asset Process. Each takes effect on its own date.

Route by route, with the date each one bites

The third column is the part that changes what you should do this month, and none of these dates is the day you sign or the day you first speak to an adviser. The last row is the statutory moratorium, which is cover while you decide rather than a fifth displacing route.

Two of those rows are covered in full elsewhere. Whether a Debt Arrangement Scheme stops a wage arrestment and whether a trust deed stops one take each mechanism in turn.

Money already taken from your pay

Deductions made before the trigger date are credited against the debt and are not usually refunded. Check the position with the creditor.

Ask the creditor to confirm in writing how the deductions have been applied, and check the running balance against your payslips. A gap between the two is worth raising early.

Sheriff officer expenses and, on a council tax account, the statutory addition made when a summary warrant was granted are part of the balance too. Ask for a breakdown rather than a single figure.

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.

What it does not do

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

It is applied for through the Accountant in Bankruptcy, usually by your money adviser, and how a moratorium protects you covers the six months in full.

The point the sources treat differently

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.

So a moratorium is best treated as cover for getting an application prepared rather than as an answer in itself. The route you use it to reach is what actually displaces the arrestment.

Where a sheriff makes a Time to Pay Order, section 9(2)(a) requires the sheriff to make an order recalling any existing earnings arrestment. That duty is mandatory rather than discretionary.

What is mandatory and what is not

For an attachment or another arrestment the sheriff only may recall or restrict, under section 9(2)(d) and (e). The earnings arrestment is the one the section deals with in the imperative.

An Order is also competent against a summary warrant, and has been since 1 April 2008. A Time to Pay Direction is not, because a direction responds to a court action and a summary warrant involves none.

The limits, given straight

The debt outstanding has to be £25,000 or less, excluding interest, a figure substituted on 10 July 2000. HMRC and Revenue Scotland debts are excluded, and an Order is not competent once certain diligences are well advanced.

One point is not settled. Section 5(1) applies where a charge for payment has been served, an arrestment executed or an action of adjudication commenced, and whether an earnings arrestment on its own satisfies that has not been resolved.

So do not treat it as an entitlement. A money adviser or the sheriff court can confirm whether an application is competent on your facts.

Debt level and assets do most of the deciding. The thresholds are statutory, so a route is either open to you or it is not.

The thresholds side by side

The detail behind each row lives on its own page. What the Debt Arrangement Scheme is, what a protected trust deed is and what sequestration is each set out the conditions in full.

Where two routes overlap

Some debt levels qualify for more than one route. A debt of £6,000 with steady income can meet the trust deed floor and the programme test at the same time.

That is where the difference stops being arithmetic. A programme repays in full and is not insolvency, and the other two are formal insolvency recorded on a public register.

Whether your surplus income can clear the debt in a reasonable period is the first question, and what you own is the second. Neither is a matter of preference.

If your income can clear the debt in a reasonable period

A Debt Payment Programme repays everything you owe with interest and charges frozen from the date of the application. There is no statutory maximum length, and the average programme runs about six years.

Where the debt is small and a single creditor is involved, a Time to Pay Order may reach the same place faster. Ask about both in the same conversation.

If it cannot

A protected trust deed and sequestration are the formal insolvency routes, and neither requires you to repay everything. Both appear on the public Register of Insolvencies.

Where you own a home with equity, that is the point to raise first rather than last. It changes the answer more than the debt level does.

Owning land is also an absolute bar on the Minimal Asset Process, and a share counts. So the question of what you own can close a route before the debt level is even reached.

If you have very little

The Minimal Asset Process is the cheapest route and it is free in every case. It needs debts of no more than £25,000, assets of no more than £2,000, no single asset over £1,000 and no ownership of land.

An informal arrangement, an affordability argument and any mechanism that belongs to English law. The table names each one so you can rule it out.

The list, and why each fails

An arrestment takes effect when the schedule is served on your employer and runs until the debt is paid or extinguished, your employment ends, or it is recalled or abandoned. Whether an arrestment can be stopped once it has started covers the practical position.

Asking is still worth doing

Section 47(2) brings an arrestment to an end where it has been recalled or abandoned, so putting an offer in writing costs nothing. It is not one of the statutory routes above, and negotiating an arrangement instead sets out how to put it.

Keep the request and the reply. Both are useful later if the figures turn out to be wrong.

What an offer cannot do is change the deduction while the arrestment stands. Your employer applies the statutory table until the arrestment ends or is displaced.

Get the numbers in one place and take them to a free approved money adviser. Every route above except a Time to Pay Order has to be lodged by somebody else: an approved money adviser for a programme or a debtor application, and a licensed insolvency practitioner for a trust deed.

What to gather

• Your last three months of payslips or benefit statements.
• A list of every debt, with the creditor and a current balance beside each.
• Any paperwork about the arrestment, and your council’s statement by year if council tax is involved.
• A note of what you own, including any vehicle and its value.

Bring the payslips showing the deduction as well as the balance. The two together are what an adviser needs to test which routes are open.

Who to ask

Citizens Advice Scotland, StepChange, Money Advice Scotland and National Debtline all give free help. A local authority employee working as a money adviser is one of the approved categories, so ask whether your own council runs a money advice team.

What free debt advice is available sets out who does what, and which of them can lodge an application rather than only explain one.

The regulations behind the programme route are the Debt Arrangement Scheme (Scotland) Regulations 2011, and the insolvency routes sit in the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016.