The short version is that it belongs to your employer rather than to the creditor or the sheriff officers. Payroll has been handed a legal duty it did not ask for, and the Act lets it recover a pound for the work.

Nobody has to tell you about it in advance, which is why it turns up as a surprise line after the first deduction. Does a wage arrestment show on your payslip covers what else should appear.

From two provisions, and neither of them is Schedule 2. Section 71 of the 1987 Act creates the charge and lets it be varied, and regulation 3 of the 2006 Regulations prescribes £1.00.

The enabling section

Section 71 of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 is headed employer’s fee for operating diligence against earnings. It set the fee at 50 pence and allowed a different sum to be prescribed in regulations.

It has been in force since 30 November 1988. The only modification recorded against the section is the 2006 Regulations.

The regulation that sets the figure

Regulation 3 of SSI 2006/116 says that for the purpose of section 71 the sum prescribed is £1. It was made on 7 March 2006 and came into force on 5 April 2006.

It has not moved in twenty years. No later Diligence against Earnings instrument prescribes a fee, and the two most recent cite section 71 nowhere among their enabling powers.

Why the source matters

Plenty of payroll pages attribute the charge to Schedule 2. Schedule 2 holds the deduction tables, most recently substituted by SSI 2024/293 with effect from 6 April 2025, and it says nothing about an employer’s fee.

The distinction is not academic. Because the charge sits in section 71 rather than in the tables, the wording of that section decides three practical questions that the tables could not.

No. Section 71 says the employer may charge the fee, not that it must, so an employer that does not levy it is doing nothing wrong.

You can ask, and you should not count on it

A polite question to payroll costs nothing, and a smaller organisation may decide the pound is not worth the line on the payslip. There is no right to insist.

It is also not the thing worth spending your energy on. A pound a payday is not what makes an arrestment hard to live with.

What the charge is not

• It is not a sheriff officer fee. Those are set by an Act of Sederunt and recovered through the diligence itself.
• It is not a penalty, and it has nothing to do with whether you have missed payments.
• It is not something the creditor receives. Your employer keeps it.
• It is not part of the Schedule 2 calculation, so it sits outside the protected nil bands.

Once for each payment the employer makes to the creditor. Section 71 attaches the fee to the occasion of payment, so the annual cost depends entirely on how often you are paid.

What it adds up to over a year

Weekly pay is the expensive one, at more than four times what a monthly paid colleague on the same arrestment pays. How is a wage arrestment calculated on monthly pay sets out the monthly cycle.

A period with no deduction carries no charge

Where your net earnings fall below the nil band there is no payment to the creditor, so there is nothing for the fee to attach to. Those thresholds are £750.00 a month, £172.61 a week and £24.66 a day.

The same applies in a period with no pay at all. No deduction means no charge.

It reaches a conjoined arrestment order too

Section 71 covers a payment to the sheriff clerk under a conjoined arrestment order as well as a payment to a creditor. What is a conjoined arrestment order explains how one of those works.

Neither. Section 71 makes the fee deductible from net earnings after the arrestment deduction has been made, so it comes out of what is left for you and the creditor still gets the full arrested amount.

The order of operations, which is where people go wrong

Section 73(1) defines net earnings as what is left after exactly four deductions, and the employer’s own charge is not one of them. What counts as net earnings for a wage arrestment lists all four.

A monthly example

Take net monthly pay of £1,800. The monthly table gives £112.50 plus 20% of the £300 above £1,500, which is £172.50.

Add the fee and £173.50 leaves your pay that month. Of that, £172.50 reduces the debt and £1.00 does not.

Why an online calculator will be a pound out

Calculators work from the Schedule 2 tables, and the tables do not include the charge. The total leaving your pay is always slightly more than the figure they give.

As a separate deduction line, distinct from the arrested amount. Where your payslip shows a single combined figure, ask payroll to split it out so you can check both parts.

What to check

• The net earnings figure used, which should be after tax, National Insurance and pension contributions.
• Which table was applied, weekly, monthly or daily, and whether it matches how you are paid.
• The arrested amount, checked against the current Schedule 2 bands.
• The £1.00 charge, taken once per deduction and no more.

Ask in writing

Even a short email gives you a dated record, and it usually gets a more careful answer than a corridor conversation. What are an employer’s legal duties for a wage arrestment sets out what payroll is obliged to do.

The current bands took effect on 6 April 2025 and were still in force in August 2026. If payroll is working from an older table, the arrested figure will be wrong rather than the fee.

No. Section 47(1) puts the duty to deduct on the employer, and section 57(1) makes an employer that fails to comply liable to pay the creditor the sums it should have deducted.

The fee and the duty are different things

The charge is permissive and the deduction is not. Payroll may waive its pound and it may not waive the arrestment.

Section 57(1)(b) adds the sting: an employer in that position cannot recover from the employee what it wrongly paid them, so it pays twice. Can an employer refuse to action a wage arrestment goes through the consequences.

Your job is not at risk over this

There is no law allowing an employer to dismiss someone for having a wage arrestment, and dismissal on that basis alone would be exposed to an unfair dismissal claim by an employee with the qualifying service of two years.

Some regulated roles, in financial services for example, involve fitness and propriety checks where serious financial difficulty is relevant. An arrestment on its own is not a bar, and ACAS can advise on the employment side.

The same fee turns up in a trust deed

Section 174(7) of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016 lets an employer operating a trust deed payment instruction charge a fee equivalent to the section 71 fee, so the same pound appears there.

That instruction is not an arrestment, and how trust deed payment instructions to employers work explains the difference.

The £1 is the smallest cost in the chain. A 10 per cent statutory addition goes on council tax when a summary warrant is granted, and sheriff officer expenses are recovered through the diligence itself.

The statutory addition

Paragraph 2(2) of Schedule 8 to the Local Government Finance Act 1992 adds a surcharge of 10 per cent of the sum remaining due and unpaid. It is added once, when the warrant is granted, and not annually.

That is usually the real reason the balance looks nothing like the original bill. It attaches before a sheriff officer is instructed at all.

Sheriff officer expenses

Section 93(1) of the 1987 Act makes the expenses of serving an earnings arrestment schedule, and of the charge preceding it, recoverable from the debtor by the diligence concerned but not by any other legal process. Are sheriff officer fees added to your wage arrestment balance covers how that works.

So they come out of what is taken from your wages rather than being billed separately. How much does a wage arrestment cost you in total adds the layers up, and our sheriff officer advice pages cover the firms.

Ask for it in writing

Ask the sheriff officer firm named on your letter for a written statement of account. It should show the original sum, any statutory addition, every expense charged and every payment credited.