£3,000, including interest, at the date the application is made. Section 2(8)(a) is the only debt figure in the full administration test, and there is no upper limit.

The rest of section 2(8) is about circumstances, not amounts

You must have had no award of sequestration in the five years before the application, and you must have obtained the advice of a money adviser. You must also give a statement of undertakings.

Then you need one of three gateways in section 2(8)(e): apparent insolvency, a certificate for sequestration, or a trust deed that failed to become protected. How you apply takes each in turn.

A threshold is not a target

Owing more than £3,000 does not make sequestration suitable, and owing far more does not make it compulsory. It is the point at which one door opens.

The median debt in a full administration case was £32,100 in 2025-26 and £12,400 in a Minimal Asset Process. Those are middle values published by the Accountant in Bankruptcy, not averages and not requirements.

Every figure in one place

No minimum debt is currently prescribed for the Minimal Asset Process. The old £1,500 floor stopped applying on 6 February 2023, though the power to set one again remains.

What actually happened to the £1,500

Regulation 2 of the 2023 Regulations substituted the word such for the words £1,500 or such other in section 2(2)(b)(i), with effect from 6 February 2023.

So the provision still reads not less than such amount as may be prescribed. The floor was made prescribable rather than abolished, and nothing has been prescribed since.

That is why the careful wording is worth having. A page that says the Minimal Asset Process has no minimum debt is right today and wrong the moment an amount is prescribed.

The ceiling is the real test

Section 2(2)(b)(ii) caps total debts including interest at £25,000, a figure in force since 29 March 2021 under SSI 2021/148. Two pages in this market still print the old £17,000.

The ceiling sits alongside asset limits of £2,000 in total and £1,000 for any single item, and a bar on owning land. The £25,000 limit and how a Minimal Asset Process works cover the rest of the conditions.

Student loans are left out of the £25,000

Student loan debt does not count towards the £25,000 limit. Section 2(2A), which has applied since 29 March 2021, leaves it out of the calculation.

One page in a fifty-page sweep of this market states that, and it costs the reader their eligibility everywhere else. Which debts count towards the limit deals with it properly.

£5,000 in relevant debts. Section 7(1) defines a qualified creditor by that figure, and two or more creditors may add their debts together to reach it.

The figure changed on 1 October 2022

Section 20(2) of the Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Act 2022 substituted £5,000 for £3,000, subject to a saving in section 20(3) of that Act.

It was a permanent change rather than a temporary pandemic measure. Relevant debts are liquid or illiquid debts, secured or unsecured, but not contingent debts, future debts or amounts payable under a confiscation order.

Money is not enough on its own

Section 13(2)(a) allows a qualified creditor’s petition only where the apparent insolvency founded on was constituted within the four months before the petition is presented.

A charge for payment that expired eight months ago cannot be dusted off. Whether a creditor can make you bankrupt sets out the whole sequence.

How often it actually happens

The Accountant in Bankruptcy’s 2025-26 annual statistics, published on 26 August 2026, record 561 awards on creditor petitions against 2,415 on debtor applications.

So roughly one Scottish bankruptcy in five starts with a creditor. Creditor petitions rose 9.4 per cent on the year before, from 513.

Because £1,500 is still a real figure in the Act, in a different place. Section 16(1)(i) uses it for one of the ways a creditor constitutes your apparent insolvency.

Three different numbers, three different jobs

Section 16(1)(i) uses £1,500 as the amount a creditor must be owed in liquid debts before that route to apparent insolvency is open. It is not a minimum for applying, and it never was the £3,000 figure.

The provision reads £1,500 or such sum as may be prescribed, and no prescribing instrument has been found. So the figure stands as the Act prints it rather than as one that is known never to have moved.

The £1,500 that used to be a Minimal Asset Process floor was unprescribed on 6 February 2023 by the 2023 Regulations, and the £5,000 belongs to a petitioning creditor.

And there are two different £3,000s

Section 2(3)(b) opens with the words for the purposes of subsection (2)(c) and (d), which is the Minimal Asset Process asset test. Keeping a car explains how the disregard works in practice.

Merging the two produces the sentence that appears across this market, in which a car worth £3,000 somehow becomes a minimum debt. They are unrelated tests that happen to share a figure.

Ordinary unsecured debts, and interest with them. Both the £3,000 test and the £25,000 test are expressed as total debts including interest.

Counting in, and writing off, are different questions

A student loan is left out of the £25,000 test on the way in and is still owed on the way out.

Note where the student loan sits in section 145. It is not in the list of exceptions at all, and survives because section 145(7) preserves the student loan regulations.

Which debts are not written off sets out the whole of section 145(3), which is a short and closed list.

Debts you take on afterwards

Anything you incur after the date of sequestration sits outside it. Rent, council tax, energy and phone bills for the period after the award remain payable in full.

The distinction matters most on the Minimal Asset Process route. A debt that survives your discharge still counts towards the £25,000 ceiling, so it can use up headroom without gaining you anything at the end.

The Debt Arrangement Scheme has no minimum at all. A debt payment programme can be approved for a single debt of any size, and it freezes interest and charges while you repay.

What each route needs before it is open to you

A Debt Arrangement Scheme writes off none of the money you owe. Interest, fees, penalties and charges stop, so the balance stops growing, but the principal is repaid to the last penny.

Whether there is a minimum for the Debt Arrangement Scheme and how much debt you need for a trust deed deal with each threshold in full.

A trust deed needs more debt than a bankruptcy

That surprises people. Section 164(3) requires total debts of at least £5,000 at the date you grant the deed, against £3,000 for a full administration application.

No. Passing a debt threshold tells you a route is open, not that it is the best one on your figures.

What decides it instead

Your surplus income, what you own and what you need to protect decide far more cases than the debt total does. Asset limits, land ownership and previous awards rule people in and out.

Sequestration against a trust deed and sequestration against the Debt Arrangement Scheme both start from that arithmetic rather than from the label.

The conditions that decide more cases than the money

• A previous award of sequestration in the last five years, which closes the full administration route.
• Owning land, which closes the Minimal Asset Process under section 2(2)(e).
• Assets over £2,000 in total, or a single item over £1,000, on the same route.
• A certificate for sequestration that has run out of time before the application goes in.

Each of those is a yes or no question rather than a matter of degree. They are the reason two people owing the same amount can end up on different routes.

What it costs to find out

Nothing. Citizens advice bureaux, council money advice teams, StepChange, National Debtline and Advice Direct Scotland all give this advice free.

You have to see a money adviser before any debtor application in any event, and what a sequestration costs covers the fee position.