A letter from a company you have never dealt with feels like the plan has gone wrong. What has changed is who receives the money.

There are rules about telling you, and Scots law on assignation changed on 1 April 2025. Whether creditors can still take court action covers what any owner of the debt can do next.

Because it turns a slow-paying account into cash today. It is routine collections practice rather than a judgement about you.

Two different things happen, and they are often confused

An account can be passed to a collection agency, which chases it on the creditor’s behalf. Or the balance can be sold outright to a purchaser, which becomes the owner.

Only the second is an assignation. In the first the original creditor still owns the debt and the agency is acting for it.

Nothing in your plan is a promise from the creditor

What is binding is your contract with the provider, not the plan itself. The creditors are not parties to it.

A creditor that accepted your offer did not agree to hold the account for the life of the arrangement. Acceptance and ownership are different things.

A reduced payment arrangement makes it more likely

An account being paid at less than the contractual rate, or one that has defaulted, is the kind that gets moved on. Whether defaults are added during a plan covers the default decision.

It does not mean the plan has failed

Your payments still reduce the balance, whoever owns it. What happens if a creditor refuses your plan covers the related worry.

The owner changes and the payment is redirected. The amount, the history and your rights all stay exactly as they were.

Point by point

An assignation transfers the claim as it stands. A buyer takes the debt with everything that was already true about it.

The one thing worth re-establishing

No creditor has to freeze interest because you are on a debt management plan. No statute requires it and no Financial Conduct Authority rule requires it.

A freeze the original creditor agreed to was a concession rather than a binding term, so ask the new owner to confirm its position in writing. Whether a plan freezes interest sets out what the rules do and do not require.

And your protection is unchanged, because there was none

A plan does not stop enforcement. It has no statutory effect on diligence at all.

The buyer, under the Handbook, and Scots law now gives it a second route. Since 1 April 2025 a purchaser can register the assignation instead of telling you.

The notice obligations

CONC 6.5 contains two provisions only, and CONC 6.5.2 is a rule requiring the firm to arrange for notice of the assignment to be given to the customer.

It cross-refers to section 82A of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, and it does not apply to agreements secured on land.

The Scottish change, which is current and largely unreported

The Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Act 2023 was brought fully into force on 1 April 2025 by SSI 2024/378.

Section 3 transfers a claim where an assignation document is granted and either intimation has been made to you or the document has been registered in the new Register of Assignations.

So they never wrote to me is no longer a safe assumption in Scotland. An authorised purchaser of a regulated credit agreement still has to give you notice under the Handbook rule.

The Act also protects someone who pays in good faith

Sections 10 to 15 of the same Act deal with the position of a debtor who performs in good faith. How they work in a particular case is a question for an adviser rather than a guide.

There is no freeze to break, because there never was one. What binds the buyer is the same forbearance rule that bound the original lender.

Where the duty comes from

CONC 7.3.4, which is a rule, requires a firm to treat customers in or approaching arrears with forbearance and due consideration, and the section it sits in is addressed to lenders, owners and debt collectors.

Suspending, reducing, waiving or cancelling interest is the first of the Handbook’s examples of what forbearance can look like. Those are examples in guidance rather than a duty to freeze.

So a purchaser owes the same duty as the seller did. That is not because of the assignation rules but because the buyer is itself a regulated firm.

The conduct rules travel with the debt too

CONC 7.9, which contains rules and guidance, governs contact and collection. Its rules include 7.9.4, on contact at unreasonable times, 7.9.6, on disclosure to third parties, and 7.9.14, on conduct during a visit.

A complaint goes to the firm first and then to the Financial Ombudsman Service, and what to do if a debt collector contacts you about an old debt covers the practical side.

And they do not reach every creditor

Those rules bind only firms the Financial Conduct Authority regulates. They do not reach your council for council tax, HMRC, or the Child Maintenance Service.

It should not restart anything. The original default date carries over, and a sale does not buy a creditor another six years.

The regulator’s position

The Information Commissioner’s Office says that where two entries clearly relate to the same account, with the same default date and balances and the original showing as settled, that is likely to be fair.

It warns separately about entries recorded so that they look like two different debts, or so that a debt stays on the file longer than six years from the original default. Whether defaults are added during a plan sets out how the dates work.

What to check on your own report

• That the original account shows as settled once the debt has been sold.
• That the new entry carries the original default date, not today’s.
• That the balances on the two entries are consistent.
• That nothing appears twice as though you owed it twice.

Raise it with both the firm and the agency

The creditor supplies the data and the agency displays it, so a correction usually needs both. Whether a plan affects your credit score covers what else is recorded.

No. It takes the claim as it stands, which means the same remedies and the same limits.

What that means in Scotland

It can raise an action, obtain decree, serve a charge for payment and then instruct diligence through sheriff officers. Whether creditors can still take court action sets out the sequence, and none of it is affected by your plan.

What stops an earnings arrestment is a statutory route rather than an arrangement, and whether a plan stops a wage arrestment is the page for that.

One thing nobody can buy is your wages

Section 7 of the Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Act 2023 says it is not competent for an individual to assign a claim in respect of wages or salary payable to them, in force since 1 April 2025.

Anyone proposing to take an assignation of your pay is proposing something Scots law does not allow. What subsection (3) leaves untouched is any other enactment that does allow such an assignation in particular circumstances.

None of that reaches a wage arrestment, which is a diligence rather than an assignation. The section has nothing to say about the deduction coming off your pay.

Ask for the paperwork if anything looks wrong

A purchaser should be able to produce the original agreement and a statement of the account. Asking for both is reasonable and costs nothing.

An old debt is worth checking before you pay

Most consumer debts in Scotland carry a five-year negative prescription, and a payment interrupts it. A purchaser writing about a very old account is a reason to take advice first.

Tell your provider, ask the new owner for a statement, and check the credit file entry. All three take one letter each.

The steps

Your provider has to keep you informed about dealings with each creditor as part of its review obligations, so ask it to confirm the redirection in writing. Whether creditors have to accept a plan covers the wider relationship.

Do not stop paying while it is sorted out

A gap while the paperwork catches up is how an account ends up in enforcement. Keep paying and keep the record of where the money went.

And treat it as a prompt to review the plan

An account being sold on is a reason to have the plan reviewed. When to move to a statutory solution sets out the signals, and Citizens Advice Scotland, StepChange, National Debtline and Advice Direct Scotland all give free debt advice.