The route has a shape to it: advice, protection if you need it, submission, 21 days for creditors, a decision, then your first payment. How the Debt Arrangement Scheme works covers the scheme itself.

Interest, fees and charges freeze from the date the application is recorded rather than from approval. So the clock starts working for you before a single creditor has replied.

If money is already coming out of your wages or your bank account, say so at the first appointment. Whether a Debt Arrangement Scheme stops a wage arrestment explains why the order of events changes when enforcement is already running.

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.

Who counts as an approved money adviser

Approval runs through the Accountant in Bankruptcy. Insolvency practitioners, advisers working under their delegated authority, advisers in organisations accredited at Type 2 level or above under the Scottish National Standards, Citizens Advice Bureaux in full membership of Citizens Advice Scotland and local authority money advisers all qualify.

The Accountant in Bankruptcy’s notes for guidance for money advisers set out what an adviser has to do at each stage. Whether you need a money adviser to apply covers how to find one.

What it costs you to apply

Nothing. mygov.scot puts it plainly: money advisers cannot charge for setting up a debt payment programme through DAS, and your creditors cover the cost of running it afterwards.

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 money for the scheme actually comes from.

Signing is optional

Regulation 20(2)(b) makes an application competent without your signature where it contains the adviser’s declaration that you were given appropriate advice and consented to proceed without signing. That is there for practical reasons rather than to cut you out of the process.

Proof of what you earn, a record of what you have to spend, and verified figures for every debt. The Accountant in Bankruptcy asks that the details of a debt be no more than four weeks old on the date the application is submitted.

The checklist

AiB’s chapter on applying for a debt payment programme is where the four-week rule and the verification requirements come from.

You do not choose which debts go in

Regulation 20(2A) requires the programme to cover every debt you owe at the date of the application that a programme is capable of covering. The one option you have is housing arrears, and which debts can and cannot go into a programme sets out both lists.

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

Yes, through a statutory moratorium, and it now 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.

How the moratorium works

You get one in any twelve months, under section 195(2) of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016. It ends early if a programme is approved, and it can run past six months where an application has been lodged and not yet decided.

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.

How a statutory moratorium protects you covers what it does and does not reach.

The old six-week route is gone

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.

A page still offering six weeks of protection before an application is quoting a provision that was taken off the statute book.

The moratorium period itself was six weeks until 1 October 2022. Anything you read that still says six weeks is at least four years out of date.

It is submitted through eDEN, entered on the DAS Register, and protection from diligence starts at that point. Interest, fees, penalties and other charges are frozen from the date the application is recorded.

The stages, with the deadline attached to each

What the protection covers, and when it ends

From the moment the application is entered on the register it is not competent to serve a charge for payment, to commence or execute diligence for the debts, or for a creditor to petition for your sequestration.

Since 27 June 2015 that protection ends on the earliest of: approval; 14 days after a notice of rejection is entered; 28 days after an application for review is entered; or withdrawal. Those two tails are statutory, at regulation 30(2A), inserted by the 2015 amendment regulations.

The freeze on interest and charges

Interest, fees, penalties and other charges stop being owed on the debts in an approved programme, under the Debt Arrangement Scheme (Interest, Fees, Penalties and Other Charges) (Scotland) Regulations 2011. Whether a Debt Arrangement Scheme freezes interest and charges covers what happens to the frozen sums at the end.

Not all of them. 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.

Silence counts as agreement

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.

The threshold was substituted by the 2019 amendment regulations, in force 4 November 2019, and whether all your creditors have to agree works through what happens at each level of objection.

Nine tenths is not the whole test

Reaching nine tenths does not end the matter. Regulation 24(1) is subject to regulation 24(1A), in force since 1 April 2015, so a programme for an individual may only be approved in accordance with the Common Financial Tool.

An objection does not end the application. Where approval cannot be given under regulation 24, regulation 25(1) requires the DAS Administrator to approve a programme that is fair and reasonable.

So an objection does not end the application. The fair and reasonable test sets out the factors.

When approval takes effect

The DAS Administrator enters a notice in the register, and the programme is approved from midnight at the start of the day before that entry. AiB’s chapter on the decision on an application describes the automatic approval and the fair and reasonable route in its own words.

You make one payment to a payments distributor, and the first one is due within 42 days of approval under regulation 27(2)(a). Any arrestment of your income or property is recalled.

The conditions you take on

Falling behind is a ground for revocation rather than an immediate end to the programme, and why a Debt Arrangement Scheme is revoked covers what the grounds are and how much notice you get.

What approval does to enforcement

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 has the detail.

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.

What you pay each month

The figure comes out of the Common Financial Tool assessment, and in DAS you may propose a proportion of your whole surplus income rather than all of it. How a Debt Arrangement Scheme payment is calculated works through it.

You ask the DAS Administrator to review the decision first. Only once that review is decided does an appeal lie to the sheriff, under regulation 47C.

The two stages, and the two deadlines

You apply in writing for a review within 14 days of intimation of the determination, and the DAS Administrator must review it within 28 days. Protection from diligence runs for 14 days after the notice of rejection is entered, and for 28 days after an application for review is entered.

An appeal then lies to the sheriff on a point of law under regulation 47C, by summary application, within 14 days of intimation of the review decision. The sheriff’s decision is final.

If a programme is not the right answer

A rejection is not the end of the options. Which debt solution is best if you have a wage arrestment compares the routes, and our Debt Arrangement Scheme page sets out how we help.

Free advice on all of it is available from Citizens Advice Scotland and National Debtline, both of which publish their own guides to the scheme.