Timing is the part that catches people out. Protection arrives in stages, and the stage you are at decides what a creditor can still do this week.

Here is what an arrestment freezes, when a programme lifts it, what happens to money already caught, and the short list of things a programme does not settle. Our guide to how the Debt Arrangement Scheme works covers the scheme itself.

The balance above £1,000. That protected minimum balance sits on the face of section 73F(3)(a) of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 and has done since 1 November 2022.

The rules that apply whatever you do next

The figure was written into the statute itself by the Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Act 2022, which also removed the old uprating power. Section 73F of the 1987 Act is where it lives, and older figures quoted online predate that change.

Why the fourteen weeks matter

Arrested funds are released to the creditor automatically at the end of that period unless something intervenes. A Debt Payment Programme is one of the things that can intervene.

What a bank arrestment is sets out the mechanics in full, including what a sheriff officer has to serve on you and when.

At the moment the programme takes effect. Regulation 26(2) sets that at midnight on the day immediately preceding the day the notice of approval is entered in the DAS Register.

What regulation 33(1)(a) says

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.

The regulation does not use the phrase bank arrestment. It speaks of any arrestment of your income or property, which takes in money frozen at a bank and a deduction from wages alike.

Who sends the notice

Since 29 October 2018 the continuing money adviser sends that notice, or the DAS Administrator where there is no continuing money adviser.

That changed on 29 October 2018, under the Debt Arrangement Scheme (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2018. Before then the DAS Administrator sent it in every case, and plenty of pages still say so.

Either way the paperwork is not your job. Whether a Debt Arrangement Scheme stops a wage arrestment covers the same recall as it applies to your pay.

It stops moving. Regulation 34(2) makes it incompetent to release arrested funds to the creditor while a Debt Payment Programme is approved, so the automatic release at 14 weeks does not happen.

If the programme is later revoked

The clock pauses rather than resets. Regulation 34(2) says the period between approval and revocation is disregarded in working out whether the 14 weeks has expired.

So a programme that runs and then fails leaves the arrestment where it was rather than further along. Why a programme is revoked covers the grounds.

Do not sign a mandate without advice

A mandate signed at the bank or with the sheriff officers releases the arrested funds early. Once it is signed the money is gone.

Nothing about the mandate is urgent, because the funds are not going anywhere until the 14 weeks are up. Speak to a money adviser first.

Money already taken

Funds that genuinely left the account before any of this began are credited against the debt rather than refunded. What happens to money already taken deals with that, and your programme is built around the balance that is left.

Two things in sequence. A statutory moratorium while the application is prepared, and regulation 30(1)(ba) from the moment the application is entered in the DAS Register.

The moratorium

A statutory moratorium lasts six months. The period was six weeks until section 23(2) of the Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Act 2022 substituted six months in section 198 of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016, with effect from 1 October 2022.

A moratorium does stop arrested funds being released to the creditor, under section 197(3)(d) of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016, which makes it incompetent to release funds attached by an arrestment while the moratorium runs.

A statutory moratorium is the exception. It does not stop an earnings arrestment that was already running: section 197(5)(d) of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016 lets a creditor carry on executing an earnings arrestment, a current maintenance arrestment or a conjoined arrestment order that came into effect before the moratorium began.

The Accountant in Bankruptcy’s guidance is blunt about the risk of letting it lapse: if no application is made before the six months ends, the protection goes with it.

Once the application is in

Regulation 30(1)(ba) was inserted by the 2015 amendment regulations with effect from 27 June 2015, and it bars a charge for payment, the commencing or executing of diligence and creditor petitions for sequestration.

The old route of intimating an intention to apply, which carried its own six weeks of protection, was revoked on 1 April 2015. Protection before an application now runs through the moratorium.

Stage by stage

How a statutory moratorium protects you explains how to get one, and how to apply for a Debt Payment Programme sets out what happens next.

Very little, and what survives is narrow. Section 4(2A) of the Debt Arrangement and Attachment (Scotland) Act 2002 preserves three powers, and everything else in section 4 runs against the creditor.

Power by power

Section 4 of the 2002 Act also freezes the clock: any period during which the debts were subject to an approved programme is left out when a creditor’s enforcement time limits are worked out.

The furthcoming point

Furthcoming is the court action that turns an arrestment into payment. Where a creditor already holds that decree, section 4(2A) lets it be implemented.

That is a narrow exception rather than a loophole, and it is a reason to move quickly rather than let an arrestment run its course. Our sheriff officer guidance explains who is doing what on the creditor’s side.

Three questions have no clear answer in the regulations, and it is better to know that than to be told a tidy version of it.

Inhibition

Inhibition is not named anywhere in the recall provisions, and no source settles whether one already registered is recalled on approval. Ask your money adviser what applies to yours.

Regulation 33(1)(a) recalls arrestments in terms. There is no matching provision anywhere for an inhibition already registered against you.

Court action and decree

What is prohibited is a charge for payment and the commencing or executing of diligence. Whether a creditor may still raise an action is not settled by any source.

A page that tells you flatly what happens to a court action during a programme is going beyond what the regulations say. Ask your money adviser what is happening in your own case.

An attachment already carried out

Section 4(2A) preserves the auction of an attached article at the late stages it describes. How an attachment at an earlier stage is treated on approval is not covered.

None of that touches your home. Whether you lose your home in a Debt Arrangement Scheme deals with that question separately.

Get to an approved money adviser this week. They can apply for a moratorium immediately, which stops anything further while a Debt Payment Programme application is prepared.

A sensible order of actions

• Find the date the arrestment was executed, because the 4 week objection window and the 14 week release both run from it.
• Ask the bank in writing to identify any benefits or tax credits paid into the account.
• Ask an adviser about a moratorium and a Debt Payment Programme, in that order.
• Ask whether an unduly harsh application under section 73R is worth making in the meantime.

What it costs you

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.

A payments distributor may make no charge of any kind to a debtor. You pay one figure and it is split between the creditors.

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 you are signing up to

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.

Interest, fees and charges stop, and whether a Debt Arrangement Scheme freezes interest covers what happens to those sums at the end.

There is a public register entry to weigh against that, which the DAS Register explains, and our Debt Arrangement Scheme page sets out how we help.