Does A Debt Arrangement Scheme Stop A Wage Arrestment?

DAS is a statutory scheme run by the Accountant in Bankruptcy through the DAS Administrator. It is not bankruptcy, and you repay in full at an amount built from what you can afford.

Below is the timeline, the moment the deductions stop, what happens to money already taken, and what the moratorium does not cover. If you are weighing routes, start with how you stop a wage arrestment in Scotland.

When does a Debt Payment Programme actually stop the wage arrestment?

On approval. Approval operates as a recall of any arrestment of your income or property, and it takes effect from midnight on the day immediately before the approval notice is entered in the DAS Register.

The recall is automatic, and AiB tells your employer

Under the Debt Arrangement Scheme (Scotland) Regulations 2011, approval has the effect of a recall of any arrestment of the debtor’s income or property. The DAS Administrator sends the notice of recall to your employer, so your creditor does not have to lift anything itself, whatever the sheriff officer firm told you.

The same provision covers a bank arrestment.

Section 4(2) of the Debt Arrangement and Attachment (Scotland) Act 2002 does the forward-looking work. It is not competent to serve a charge for payment, or to commence or execute any diligence, for the debts in the programme.

Why entering DAS is the wrong date to plan around

Your adviser has to build a full income and expenditure picture before applying, and creditors then get 21 days to answer the consent request. Every one of those days is a day payroll is still applying the schedule it holds.

The DAS timeline, and your wages at every stage

Read down to your stage, then across.

What happens to the money already taken from your wages?

It is credited against the debt rather than handed back. Deductions taken lawfully before the recall reduce what you still owe, so the money is not lost.

Why it is a credit and not a refund

The deductions were made under a diligence that was valid at the time, so recall stops the arrestment going forward without unwinding what was collected. Ask the creditor to confirm in writing how the sums have been applied.

Check the opening balance in your programme

Your adviser verifies each debt before the application goes in, and the figure should already be net of what your wages have paid. On monthly net pay of £1,800.00 that is £172.50 a month, or £2,070.00 across twelve pay days.

The £1.00 your employer may take for each deduction is different. It comes out of your pay rather than off the debt, so it is never credited.

What protects you between applying and approval?

A six-month statutory moratorium, and then the protection running from the moment your application is entered in the DAS Register. Neither of them is the recall, because the recall is tied to approval.

What a statutory moratorium does

The moratorium sits in sections 195 to 198 of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016.

A statutory moratorium gives six months of protection and you get one per rolling 12 months. It stops service of a charge for payment, stops new diligence and stops creditor petitions for sequestration.

It does not stop a creditor obtaining a decree, and interest and charges keep accruing throughout.

It was extended from six weeks by the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020 and made permanent from 1 October 2022. AiB routes pre-application protection through it rather than through the six-week intimation route that survives in the DAS regulations.

The part to put to an adviser before you rely on it

Whether a creditor can carry on an earnings arrestment your employer is already operating is treated differently in the Accountant in Bankruptcy’s adviser guidance from the general statement of the rule. Ask a money adviser to confirm the position on your facts before relying on it.

So treat a moratorium as a block on what has not started yet rather than as a pause button on your payslip.

What the DAS legislation prohibits is a charge for payment and the commencing or executing of diligence, and both of those are steps that come after decree. It does not address the granting of the decree itself.

Consumer guidance is hedged on that, putting it as protection from most creditors using court action. So ask your adviser to put that question and the deduction question to the creditor in writing.

Interest and charges stop earlier than the deductions do

Interest, fees and charges on the debts in a DAS application are frozen from the date the application is recorded, not from approval. On completion those frozen sums cease to be owed.

On revocation the freeze falls away and creditors can apply them retrospectively.

Can council tax arrears go into a Debt Payment Programme?

Yes, council tax arrears can go in. Your current-year liability cannot, so that bill has to keep being paid alongside your programme payment.

Stop paying this year’s bill and the council can start recovery on the new balance, as our council tax debt advice page sets out.

Why the current year matters so much

Councils apply for a summary warrant once the right to pay by instalments is lost, and a 10% statutory surcharge is added when the warrant is granted.

No hearing takes place and no charge for payment is needed first. Where the current year is the problem rather than the arrears, a special payment arrangement with the council is a separate conversation worth having.

What cannot go into a programme

• Student loans, which have been excluded since 27 June 2015.
• Court fines, on the mygov.scot position.
• Hire purchase and conditional sale agreements other than the arrears, and the creditor can still repossess the goods.
• Ongoing gas, electricity, phone, child maintenance, insurance, rent or mortgage and current council tax, because only the arrears go in.
• Sums secured by a standard security, apart from arrears of a periodic payment.

How does a DPP payment compare with what an arrestment takes?

An earnings arrestment takes a figure fixed by statutory tables whatever your outgoings are. A programme payment is built from your income and essential costs using the Common Financial Tool.

The deduction comes out of net earnings, after tax, National Insurance and pension contributions. Payroll applies the table for your pay frequency under Schedule 2 to the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 and has no discretion at all.

The monthly deduction table, from 6 April 2025

These bands were substituted into Schedule 2 by the Diligence against Earnings (Variation) (Scotland) Regulations 2024, in force from 6 April 2025. They were still the live figures in August 2026.

Nothing is taken from the first £750.00 a month. On net pay of £1,800.00 the deduction is £172.50, on £2,200.00 it is £252.50 and on £1,200.00 it is £67.50, which how much they can take from your wages in Scotland works through in full.

None of that moves because your rent went up, and there is no affordability or hardship ground against an earnings arrestment.

What a programme payment is based on instead

Your adviser uses the Common Financial Tool to work out your surplus income after essential living costs. Since 29 October 2018 you may propose a proportion of that surplus rather than all of it.

There is no published minimum monthly payment, and the median monthly contribution in 2024 to 2025 was £250.

How long a programme runs

The average programme runs about six years, and those approved in the last three financial years are expected to last between 5.3 and 6.4 years. Run the arithmetic with our wage arrestment calculator before deciding either way.

What are the limits of a Debt Arrangement Scheme?

It repays your debts in full, it protects nothing until approval, and it is recorded on a free public register. It is also not insolvency, which is the main reason people pick it.

You do not need to be insolvent

DAS suits people with a regular income who can pay something each month but not the contractual amounts. There is no minimum or maximum debt, and one creditor is enough.

You have to be habitually resident in Scotland, and an approved money adviser has to make the application for you. A conjoined arrestment order bars an application, subject to an exception in the regulations, while an ordinary earnings arrestment bars nothing.

Who decides, and what it costs you

A creditor who does not reply within 21 days is deemed to consent, where the programme covers more than one debt. Approval is automatic where not less than nine tenths in value have consented.

Where 10% or more by value object, the DAS Administrator must still approve a programme that is fair and reasonable. Objection is not a veto.

You pay nothing. The 2% DAS Administrator fee and the 20% distributor fee come out of creditor recoveries, and a distributor may make no charge of any kind to a debtor.

Creditors therefore receive 78% on applications made on or after 4 November 2019. The text displayed on legislation.gov.uk still shows the superseded 8% fee and the old requirement that every creditor consent.

A public register, and what happens if it fails

The DAS Register is free and open to anyone, recording your full name, date of birth and home address. Credit reference agencies check it, and your credit rating is affected for as long as the programme runs.

A programme can be revoked where two payments fall into arrears. AiB must give at least four weeks’ notice of a proposal to revoke.

How does DAS compare with the other ways of stopping an arrestment?

DAS is the only one of these that is not insolvency and repays your debts in full. A trust deed, sequestration and a Time to Pay Order all reach an arrestment too, on different dates and at different cost.

The four routes side by side

This is the shape of the decision a money adviser works through with you. Our page on the debt solutions available in Scotland covers each route at greater length.

Trust deeds and sequestration

A protected trust deed ends an earnings arrestment on the date of protection, under section 173 of the 2016 Act, rather than on the date you sign. That gap is why a moratorium normally runs alongside, as does a trust deed stop a wage arrestment explains.

Sequestration does the same on the date of sequestration, under section 72(2) of the 1987 Act, and Minimal Asset Process counts. A Debtor Contribution Order replaces the arrestment.

Both are formal insolvency and both appear on the public Register of Insolvencies. A protected trust deed normally runs for four years, and it can be shorter where the trustee determines you can pay your debts in full sooner.

Time to Pay Orders

A Time to Pay Order is applied for after decree and is competent against a summary warrant. Where the sheriff grants one, the sheriff must recall any existing earnings arrestment.

The debt has to be £25,000 or less excluding interest. It is not settled whether an earnings arrestment alone satisfies the entry condition, so treat it as worth asking about rather than as an entitlement, and let a money adviser or the sheriff clerk at your local sheriff court confirm competency on your facts.

A Time to Pay Direction is the pre-decree version and is not available against a summary warrant.