The arrestment itself is invisible to a bank in any event. It is an instruction to your employer, it sits between the creditor, the sheriff officer and payroll, and it reaches no credit reference agency.

The real banking exposure is somewhere else, and it is worth understanding before your next payday rather than after it.

No. Regulation 25 of the Payment Accounts Regulations 2015 sets out every ground on which a designated institution may refuse a basic bank account, and nothing about debt is among them.

The grounds, in full

Read what that table is saying

Refusal is compulsory only where opening the account would be unlawful. Refusal is discretionary only where you have abused the institution’s staff.

Everything else is outside the regulation. A default, a decree, an arrestment against your wages or your bank account, a Debt Payment Programme and a sequestration are all absent from it.

And a refusal has to be explained

Regulation 25(3) requires the institution, without delay, to tell you in writing and free of charge why the application was refused, if it may lawfully do so. Regulation 25(4) requires that reason to be sufficiently detailed and specific for you to understand it.

Regulation 25(5) then requires the institution to tell you how to complain to it, and about your right to complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Those two paragraphs were substituted with effect from 28 April 2026.

Nine institutions designated by the Treasury. Regulation 22 requires a designated credit institution to offer a payment account with basic features to any consumer who applies and meets the eligibility criteria.

How the designation works

Regulation 21(1) requires the Treasury to designate a sufficient number of UK credit institutions so that access is available and competition is not distorted. The procedure is in Schedule 6 to the Regulations.

The Treasury’s report Basic bank accounts: July 2023 to June 2024, published on 5 November 2025, names them as Barclays UK, The Co-operative Bank, HSBC UK, Lloyds Banking Group including Halifax and Bank of Scotland, Nationwide Building Society, NatWest Group including Royal Bank of Scotland and Ulster Bank, Santander UK, TSB, and Virgin Money UK.

This is not a niche product

The same report records 7,039,100 basic bank accounts open across the nine at 30 June 2024. The duty has applied to applications made on or after 18 September 2016.

Anyone legally resident in the United Kingdom who does not already hold a comparable payment account with a UK credit institution, or who is not eligible for that institution’s other accounts.

Legal residence is defined generously

Regulation 23(2) makes clear that consumers with no fixed address are included, as are asylum seekers within the meaning of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, and people whose expulsion is impossible for legal or factual reasons.

That is unusual drafting and it is deliberate. The point of the regime is that people at the edges of the system are not shut out of banking.

Two practical points

You are not treated as holding an account where the institution has already given you notice that it is closing. So being closed down elsewhere does not disqualify you.

Regulation 23(3) lets an institution verify your eligibility, and it may accept your own declaration. If you do not have the usual documents, ask what alternatives the institution accepts, because regulation 23(3) lets it take your own declaration.

Everything except lend. Regulation 19 sets the services it must provide and regulation 20 says you cannot be charged for them.

The features, and the price

The no-fee rules go further than people expect

Regulation 20(4) says that where a payment fails because there is not enough money in the account, the institution must not charge you any fee. Regulation 20(5) says that where overrunning happens, it must not charge any fee or any interest.

For someone whose income has just fallen because of a deduction at source, that matters a great deal. How do you build a budget when money is taken from your wages covers the rest of the arithmetic.

One more protection

Regulation 19(6) says access must not be made conditional on buying additional services. Regulation 19(4) requires the institution to let you manage transactions at its publicly accessible premises and through online facilities where it has them.

Not a basic bank account. Regulation 26(2) gives a closed list of grounds for closing one, and an arrestment, arrears and a debt solution are not on it.

The closure grounds for a basic account

• Knowingly using or attempting to use the account for illegal purposes.
• No transaction on the account for more than 24 consecutive months.
• Incorrect information in the application, where the correct information would have led to refusal.
• No longer being legally resident in the United Kingdom, or having since opened another qualifying UK payment account.
• Conduct towards staff amounting to one of the public order or harassment offences in regulation 25(2), or a closure required under the Immigration Act 2014.

The notice period changed this year

Regulation 26(3A) sets the notice period by reference to when the contract was entered into rather than when it is being terminated. It is at least two months for a framework contract entered into before 28 April 2026, and at least 90 days for one entered into on or after that date.

For a contract entered into on or after 28 April 2026 the notice must also explain the reasons in enough detail for you to understand them. The illegal-use, false-information and staff-abuse grounds can still take effect immediately.

An ordinary current account is different

Nothing in the regulations permits closure of an ordinary account for an arrestment, and nothing prohibits closure generally either. A bank may end an indefinite framework contract on notice under its own terms.

What changed in your favour is the notice regime. Regulation 51A of the Payment Services Regulations 2017 keeps two months for contracts entered into before 28 April 2026, and regulation 51B requires at least 90 days and specific reasons for those entered into on or after it.

To a bank arrestment, which is a different diligence from a wage arrestment and reaches the money in your account rather than your pay. It attaches only the balance above £1,000.

The protected minimum balance

Section 73F(3)(a) of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 provides that an arrestment may attach only the balance above £1,000. That figure has been on the face of the statute since 1 November 2022 and is not uprated with the earnings arrestment tables.

A basic bank account is exposed on exactly the same terms as any other personal account. What a bank arrestment is in Scotland covers the mechanics, and the difference between a bank arrestment and a wage arrestment sets the two side by side.

The two clocks

A notice of objection must be lodged within four weeks of execution. Frozen funds are released to the creditor automatically 14 weeks after execution unless something is done, so ask the bank in writing for the date of execution and the amount attached.

The route the wages regime does not have

Sections 73Q and 73R of the 1987 Act let a sheriff court order funds released where the arrestment is unduly harsh to you or a dependant. Dependants for this purpose are a spouse, a civil partner, a cohabiting partner and children under 16.

Section 73A(4) defines decree for that Part to include a summary warrant, so the route reaches a council’s bank arrestment for council tax as well. What an unduly harsh application is and how you make one sets out the procedure.

Benefits and tax credits should not be arrested where they can be clearly identified in the account. Banks do not always spot them, so tell the bank in writing which payments they are.

The two account types compared

Act inside the four-week objection window and get advice the same week. The deadlines run from the date of execution, so that is the first thing to establish.

A practical order of play

• Confirm that £1,000 has been left available to you, and query it in writing if it has not.
• Identify any benefit payments inside the frozen amount and tell the bank in writing.
• Speak to a money adviser about a notice of objection or an unduly harsh application.
• Arrange emergency payments for rent, energy and food while the funds are held.

Do not sign a mandate to release the funds early

You will be told it makes things simpler. It gives up both the money and the time you have to challenge the arrestment.

The strongest protection is not a banking trick

It is stopping the enforcement. An approved programme under the Debt Arrangement Scheme, made under the Debt Arrangement Scheme (Scotland) Regulations 2011, recalls an arrestment of your income or property and blocks new diligence, and how do you stop a wage arrestment in Scotland sets out the other routes.

A statutory moratorium under the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016 also stops arrested funds being released to the creditor under section 73J of the 1987 Act, with the moratorium period left out of that clock. How a statutory moratorium protects you covers the six months.