You repay what you owe in full through a Debt Payment Programme, and while it runs interest, fees and charges are frozen. How the Debt Arrangement Scheme works covers the scheme itself.

Most people reach this question after a letter lands, or after money has already started coming out of their wages. The rules are worth reading before you assume you are shut out.

Four things: residence in Scotland, at least one debt, an application made by an approved money adviser, and payments assessed under the Common Financial Tool.

The four conditions in one place

What is not on the list

You do not have to be insolvent. You do not need a decree against you, a wage arrestment, or a certain number of creditors.

A Debt Payment Programme is not an insolvency solution. You repay the debt in full, and what changes is the pressure rather than the balance.

Whether a Debt Arrangement Scheme writes off any of your debt deals with the write-off question, which is the other thing people assume about the entry test.

There is no minimum debt and no maximum. A programme may be approved where it provides for the payment of one or more debts, so a single debt is enough.

One creditor is enough

Citizens Advice Scotland puts it in one line: you can apply for a DPP with any amount of debt. Where a page tells you that you need more than one creditor, it is wrong on the statutory test.

There is a consequence to applying with a single debt, and it is covered below. Whether there is a minimum debt for the scheme has the full answer at both ends of the scale.

There is no ceiling either

No maximum debt applies. What matters at the top end is whether the programme repays what you owe in a period the DAS Administrator considers reasonable.

The period a programme will run is one of the matters the Administrator must weigh, under regulation 25(2)(b). mygov.scot puts the entry requirement as being able to repay in a reasonable time, and neither the regulations nor the guidance defines what that is.

Citizens Advice Scotland’s practical steer is that more than ten years might be unlikely to be reasonable unless all your creditors agree.

No maximum length applies to a programme for an individual. The five-year limit that appears on some pages belongs to Business DAS.

It means Scotland is where your life is based. The Accountant in Bankruptcy describes it as having your main residence in Scotland, being registered to vote there, and normally having your bank account there and paying your bills there.

The regulations do not define it

Regulation 20(1) uses the phrase without defining it, so advisers work from AiB’s client eligibility guidance. No single document settles it, and the adviser looks at the overall picture.

Nationality has nothing to do with it. Whether you have to live in Scotland to use the scheme covers what happens if you move, and how the test works for a business.

By the Common Financial Tool, which has governed programme payments since 1 April 2015. Schedule A1 to the 2011 Regulations applies regulations 15 to 18 of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Regulations 2016 to a debt payment programme, with modifications.

The DAS modification that matters

In DAS you may propose a contribution which is a proportion of your whole surplus income, rather than all of it. AiB’s notes for guidance on the Common Financial Tool state that modification in terms.

The comparison is between your expenditure and a set of trigger figures, under regulation 15 of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Regulations 2016. Those figures are licensed to advisers and are not published openly.

There is no published minimum payment

No source sets a floor for what you must be able to offer. Anyone quoting a minimum monthly figure for entry to the scheme is not quoting a rule.

What AiB does publish is an outcome. Its annual statistics for 2025-26 put the median monthly contribution at £260, up four per cent on the year before.

That is a median rather than a target, and yours depends on your own figures. How a Debt Arrangement Scheme payment is calculated works through the assessment.

A short list of statutory bars in regulation 21(2), and one extra bar in regulation 21(3) that applies only where the programme would cover a single debt.

The bars

Two of those bars point at solutions you may already be in. What a protected trust deed is explains the second, and a discharged trust deed is a different position from a live one.

The single-debt trap

Silence counts as consent. Regulation 23(5) deems a creditor who does not respond within 21 days of the request to have consented, irrespective of any assignation of the debt.

That rule applies only to a programme providing for the payment of more than one debt. A programme covering a single debt gets no deemed consent.

So a sole creditor who simply never replies does not hand you an approval. The application goes to the fair and reasonable test instead.

No. Regulation 21(4) says an application may be made where a creditor has attempted to enforce a debt by any lawful means, so enforcement already under way does not shut you out.

What approval then does

Approval recalls any arrestment of your income or property, and notice of the recall goes to the employer or to whoever is holding the arrested funds.

Since 29 October 2018 the continuing money adviser sends that notice, or the DAS Administrator where there is no continuing money adviser. Whether a Debt Arrangement Scheme stops a wage arrestment covers the timing, which is what matters when deductions are already running.

The one enforcement that is a bar

A conjoined arrestment order is different. Where a debt of yours is being paid under one, regulation 21(2)(a) bars an application, subject to the regulation 21(4) exception.

Two people can apply together. Since 2 July 2013 the test is that each debtor is liable for a debt the programme would pay, rather than that both are liable for the same debt.

The relationship test

Regulation 22(1)(b) covers spouses or civil partners of each other, and people living together as if spouses or civil partners of each other. Both of you have to consent to the application.

AiB adds that each of you must independently meet the individual criteria. Whether you can do a joint programme with your partner covers the choice between applying together and applying separately.

If the debtor is a business

Business DAS is for a legal person, trust or unincorporated body. A sole trader uses the ordinary scheme.

What Business DAS is covers that separate route, which keeps the unanimous consent rule and carries its own five-year limit.

A money adviser applies, it costs you nothing, and not all of your creditors have to agree.

The adviser

You cannot apply on your own. Regulation 20(2)(a) requires the application to be made by a money adviser on the debtor’s behalf.

Whether you need a money adviser covers who qualifies to act as one, and how to apply for a Debt Payment Programme sets out what happens after the first appointment.

Since 4 November 2019 a money adviser may not charge an individual a fee for Debt Arrangement Scheme work, under regulation 12(2) as substituted by SSI 2019/315. What a Debt Arrangement Scheme costs sets out where the scheme’s fees actually fall.

The consent threshold

Since 4 November 2019 a programme for an individual is approved where not less than nine tenths in value of the creditors consent, under regulations 23(1)(a) and 24(1) of the Debt Arrangement Scheme (Scotland) Regulations 2011. The substituting instrument was the 2019 amendment regulations.

The test is nine tenths by value, not by number. A single creditor holding more than a tenth of the total can withhold consent and put the application to the fair and reasonable test.

Objection is not a veto either. Whether all your creditors have to agree works through what happens when one of them says no.

How the entry test compares with the other routes

Being eligible for more than one is common, and the right answer depends on what you own and what you can pay. Whether you are eligible for Minimal Asset Process bankruptcy and which debt solution is best if you have a wage arrestment compare them properly.