No regulator or advice charity publishes a figure for how many creditors accept or refuse, and any percentage you find comes from one provider’s own client base.

Each creditor decides on its own and can change its position later.

The Scottish contrast is exact. Under the Debt Arrangement Scheme consent is a statutory question with a statutory answer, and the difference between the two routes sets it out.

Because nothing compels it to say yes. The Financial Conduct Authority’s own definition of a plan is a non-statutory agreement, and the credit agreement you signed still stands in full.

A plan is a proposal

A debt management plan is an informal arrangement rather than a statutory scheme. No Act of Parliament creates it, nothing prescribes its form, and it binds nobody by force of law.

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

What goes to each creditor is an offer supported by a budget. Accepting it is a commercial decision on that creditor’s part.

And the freedom runs both ways

StepChange’s own client agreement says you can cancel the agreement at any time, by letter, email or phone.

If you are not tied in, neither is the creditor. That is the same feature seen from the other side.

Nothing requires a reason either

A creditor that refuses does not have to explain itself. There is no appeal, because there is no decision-maker to appeal to.

That is worth knowing before a provider tells you a plan is as good as agreed. Until each creditor has answered in writing, nothing has been agreed at all.

Whether the offer is realistic, and whether it is fair against the other creditors. Those are the two things a well-prepared proposal answers in advance.

What it is comparing your offer with

The contractual payment is what the creditor is entitled to. Everything below it is a concession, and a concession is a decision somebody has to make.

Include everything eligible

A creditor that sees another being paid more generously has an easy reason to refuse. Which debts can go into a plan sets out what belongs inside one.

No rule prescribes how the payment is split, and pro rata by balance is the usual method. Ask for your provider’s method in writing before you sign.

Whichever method your provider uses, leaving a debt out changes everyone else’s share.

A realistic offer is the strongest argument

A creditor comparing your budget with its own contractual entitlement is looking for something it can live with for years. An offer that collapses in three months helps nobody.

That is also why a small, sustainable figure often does better than a stretch. The question is whether the arrangement will hold.

The paperwork does the work

CONC 8.3.2 is a rule about the advice a firm gives and the action it takes for you, and CONC 8.3.1, also a rule, requires pre-contract information in a durable medium.

Read the financial statement before it goes out. It is being sent in your name and it is the document the creditor is judging.

What the rules do not do

Nothing in CONC 7.3 requires a lender to accept a repayment offer. CONC 7.3.5B, which is a rule, requires an arrangement that is agreed to be sustainable, and that is a different thing.

In four or five different ways, and rarely all in the same way as each other. Acceptance, silence and refusal all have consequences worth knowing.

The range of answers

A refusal is not the end of the plan. What happens if a creditor refuses goes through what follows.

Silence is the one to watch

A creditor that takes the money without replying has committed to nothing. Interest may still be running and the account may still be heading for a default.

Ask your provider to chase a written answer. An account with no answer on it is the account to check first every year.

Your provider has to tell you

CONC 8.8.1 is a rule, and it covers telling you the outcome of dealings with each creditor, including where one refused to freeze interest or charges accruing.

Ask for that in writing rather than over the phone. It is the record you will want at the annual review.

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.

What the rules require instead

What the Financial Conduct Authority does require is forbearance. Its rule at CONC 7.3.4, in force since 4 November 2024, says a firm must treat customers in or approaching arrears with forbearance and due consideration.

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.

And a freeze can be withdrawn

StepChange says a plan cannot make a creditor stop charging, on its page about interest and creditor contact, and what was given voluntarily can be taken back.

Whether a plan freezes interest and what to do when a creditor will not freeze deal with the two halves of that.

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

What it keeps

Whether creditors can still take court action sets out the sequence, and whether a plan stops a wage arrestment gives the answer that matters most here.

Agreement is not protection

A creditor that agreed the plan in March is not prevented from raising proceedings in September. Nothing in the arrangement gives you a defence to an action.

What protects you is a statutory route, and only a statutory route. That is the practical reason to keep the comparison in view while a plan runs.

Council tax is not in this at all

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.

A council enforces by summary warrant, and our council tax debt advice page sets out what follows from one.

And the debt can be sold

A creditor can assign the debt during the plan and the buyer takes the same rights. Whether creditors can sell your debt covers what changes and what does not.

It is decided by statute rather than by each creditor. Regulation 24(1) approves a programme where creditors holding not less than nine tenths in value consent.

Consent, silence and objection

The nine tenths test was substituted by SSI 2019/315 with effect from 4 November 2019, and regulation 23(5) deems a creditor that does not answer within 21 days to have consented, on an application for a programme providing for the payment of more than one debt.

A programme covering a single debt gets no deemed consent at all.

An objection is not a veto

Where approval cannot be given on consent, regulation 25(1) requires the DAS Administrator to approve a programme that is fair and reasonable.

There is no statutory list of grounds. Nothing in regulations 23, 24 or 25 restricts why a creditor may withhold consent, and nothing requires one to give a reason.

And nobody has to explain themselves on either route

No statutory list of grounds restricts why a creditor may withhold consent in the scheme, and nothing requires one to give a reason on a plan. The difference is what happens next.

That is the practical difference

On a plan a determined creditor can stay outside it forever. On a programme it can be brought in without its consent, and when to move to a statutory solution sets out when that matters.

Keep paying, get everything in writing, and treat the silence as information. A creditor that will not deal with your provider is the one most likely to move to enforcement.

The practical steps

• Ask your provider what it sent, when, and what came back.
• Ask whether interest is still being charged on that account.
• Keep making the payment, because money paid still reduces the balance.
• Ask a money adviser whether a statutory route would bring that creditor in.

Do not stop paying to force a response

Stopping payments gives a creditor a reason to escalate rather than a reason to engage. Money paid reduces the balance whether or not the creditor has agreed anything.

If your provider is the problem

Complain to the firm first and then to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Being authorised is what makes that route available to you.

Keep your own record

Note the date every offer went out and the date every answer came back. A year later that list is the only reliable account of what each creditor actually did.

Where to get it done free

Citizens Advice Scotland, StepChange, National Debtline and Advice Direct Scotland all work at no charge, and what a debt management plan is is the place to start if you are still deciding.