Money taken correctly under the statutory tables is not returned, even where it leaves the household short. It goes against the debt and reduces what you owe.

The other surprise is who pays it back, because it is usually not your employer. What happens if your employer deducts the wrong amount covers spotting the error, and this page covers getting the money.

It is recoverable where the deduction went beyond what the Schedule 2 tables produce, or carried on after the debt was cleared or the arrestment ceased. Where it was worked out correctly it stands, and it reduces the balance.

The line that catches most people

Money deducted before a debt payment programme, a protected trust deed or a statutory moratorium took effect is usually credited against the debt rather than refunded, so check the figures with the creditor. What happens to money already taken when a wage arrestment stops explains why.

That feels harsh when the paperwork was weeks in the making. The trigger is the date the formal step took effect, which for a trust deed is the date of protection, as does a trust deed stop a wage arrestment sets out.

Which is which

Money taken beyond the debt is recovered from the creditor rather than from your employer. Section 57(5) of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 makes any sum paid over in excess of the debt recoverable by the debtor from the creditor, with interest.

Why it is the creditor rather than payroll

Section 57(4) of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 puts a duty on the creditor to tell the employer, as soon as is reasonably practicable, once the debt has been paid, extinguished or has ceased to be enforceable by diligence.

Your employer has no way of knowing that on its own. It is running a calculation on instructions and waiting to be told when to stop.

Where your employer is protected

The employer is protected in the meantime by section 69(5) until the position is intimated to it, and section 69(4) ends any claim against the employer after a year.

So raise it quickly, because the one-year longstop runs from the date each deduction was made or ought to have been made. An employer’s legal duties for a wage arrestment sets out what payroll is actually obliged to do.

The Act adds interest at the rate it specifies. No page should quote you a percentage for that, and this one will not.

Section 57(6) goes further where the creditor failed to tell the employer to stop. The sheriff can order the creditor to pay up to twice the excess.

What has to have gone wrong

Section 57(6) bites where the creditor failed to comply with section 57(4). In other words, the debt was finished and nobody told the payroll department.

That is the everyday version of this problem rather than an exotic one. It is also the reason the balance is worth asking for in writing every few months.

Do not overstate it

The subsection says the sheriff may make the order, and the amount must not exceed twice what is recoverable under section 57(5). It is a power with a ceiling rather than an automatic doubling.

It is still worth naming politely in your letter. Where to go for help to stop a wage arrestment covers who can write it with you.

Put it in writing with the payslips, your net earnings for each period, the table you applied and the deduction it produces. Ask them to confirm their own figures, repay the difference and correct the setup going forward.

What to send

• Copies of the payslip for every period you say is wrong.
• Your net earnings for each of those periods, after tax, National Insurance and pension.
• The table you have used and the band you fall into.
• Your calculation of the correct deduction, period by period.
• The total you say has been taken in excess.
• A clear request to repay the difference and to correct the calculation from now on.

Check your figure against the right table first

The bands in Schedule 2 were substituted by the Diligence against Earnings (Variation) (Scotland) Regulations 2024, in force 6 April 2025, with a nil band up to £750.00 a month, £172.61 a week and £24.66 a day.

Several large advice pages still print superseded tables with lower thresholds, so check that the table you are using is the one substituted by SSI 2024/293. The protected earnings limits for a wage arrestment gives the current thresholds, and comparing a payslip against an old table is the quickest way to invent an over-deduction that never happened.

The £1.00 charge is separate and is not refundable as an over-deduction

The employer’s administration charge comes from section 71 of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 and was fixed at £1.00 by regulation 3 of the 2006 Regulations, with effect from 5 April 2006.

It is taken on top of the arrested sum rather than out of it, and it is charged per payment made to the creditor. What is worth querying is a charge taken twice in one period.

Why payroll usually engages

An employer that fails to comply with an arrestment is liable to the creditor under section 57(1)(a) for the sums it should have deducted, and section 57(1)(b) stops it recovering those sums from the worker. Payroll teams already treat this paperwork carefully.

Ask for a written reply giving the net earnings figure they used and the band they applied. Those are the two numbers everything else follows from, and the wage arrestment calculator will check them for you.

Section 50(3) lets the sheriff determine a dispute as to the operation of an earnings arrestment, and section 50(4) lets the sheriff order reimbursement of any payment made in the operation of the arrestment which ought not to have been made.

How the application is made

It goes in on Form 33 under rule 41(1), the employer can apply as well as you, and section 50(5) adds interest from a date the sheriff sets. The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service can confirm which sheriff court takes it.

A dispute about which table was used, or about whether the deduction was worked out on net earnings, is squarely a dispute about operation. That is what the subsection is there for.

The two routes coexist

Section 50(4) opens with the words without prejudice to section 57(5), so the operation route does not replace the recovery route. They answer different questions about different people.

What section 50 cannot do

There is no affordability ground in it. Section 46(2) abolished the old subsistence exemption and put the fixed bands in its place, so a correctly calculated deduction cannot be reduced because it hurts, as whether a wage arrestment can be stopped once it has started explains.

Then that is where it has to come back from. Send the same evidence to payroll and to the creditor on the same day, and say in each letter that you have done so.

Council tax and the sheriff officers

Council tax collected under a summary warrant is handled by the council and by the sheriff officer firm acting for it, and the reference should be on the arrestment paperwork.

Ask specifically whether a surplus is being returned or held against another year. There is no statutory rule setting the order, so what order council tax payments are allocated to matters more than people expect.

Keep the arrestment running meanwhile

You cannot instruct your employer to stop deducting while a refund is being argued about. It is carrying out a statutory instruction, and stopping exposes it to liability for the sums it should have taken.

Any claim against your employer dies one year after the deduction was, or ought to have been, made, under section 69(4). The section 50 application carries no time limit, and a payroll correction is often made in the next pay run.

A simple order of attack

If the figure turns out to be right

Then the answer is to change the arrestment rather than to chase the deduction. The Debt Arrangement Scheme and the other formal routes end an arrestment instead of shrinking it.

A free adviser will tell you in one conversation which of them is realistic. mygov.scot’s debt and decrees guidance is a reasonable place to start reading.