What you do pay is the debt. A programme repays what you owe in full, with interest and charges frozen, and how the Debt Arrangement Scheme works covers the shape of it.

The scheme is funded by a 22 per cent deduction from what your creditors receive. That is the whole of the cost, and none of it lands on you.

Nothing at all. Your only outgoing is the single monthly contribution that gets shared out among your creditors.

The three provisions that keep fees off you

The public guidance says it too

mygov.scot states that money advisers cannot charge for setting up a debt payment programme through DAS, and that your creditors cover the cost of managing 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. Whether you need a money adviser to apply covers who can act as one.

The one deadline that matters at the start

Your first payment is due within 42 days of approval, under regulation 27(2)(a) as amended on 2 July 2013. How to apply for a Debt Payment Programme sets out the rest of the timetable.

Your creditors do, out of what is distributed to them. The total is 22 per cent for an individual: 20 per cent to the payments distributor and 2 per cent to the DAS Administrator.

Where each £100 of your payment goes

The Accountant in Bankruptcy’s own guidance on fees applied to a DPP puts a creditor’s recovery on completion at 78 per cent of the debt, and says the fees are borne by the creditors rather than the client.

The 20 per cent, and its date

Twenty per cent for an individual, under regulation 17(2) as substituted by SSI 2019/315 with effect from 4 November 2019. For Business DAS it is a ceiling rather than a rate, because a distributor may charge no more than eight per cent.

The substituting instrument was the 2019 amendment regulations, and a programme applied for before that date keeps the earlier ceiling.

For an individual the rate is fixed rather than capped. The regulation says the fee is 20 per cent, including any VAT incurred, of the sum due to be paid to a creditor in a distribution.

What that means over a whole programme

On a £16,000 debt repaid in full, £3,200 of what you pay goes to the payments distributor and £320 to the DAS Administrator. You still pay £16,000, and the creditors receive £12,480.

That is the whole economics of the scheme in two lines. The creditors fund it out of a recovery they would otherwise have had to chase.

The 2 per cent

Regulation 5(3) sets the DAS Administrator’s fee at 2 per cent of any sum due to be paid to a creditor in a distribution. It is paid from the sum due to each creditor and remitted by the payments distributor.

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

What a payments distributor is explains who collects the money and how the split is made.

By the Common Financial Tool, and in DAS you may propose a contribution which is a proportion of your whole surplus income rather than all of it.

The assessment

Schedule A1 to the 2011 Regulations, which has applied since 1 April 2015, applies regulations 15 to 18 of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Regulations 2016 to a debt payment programme, with modifications, and the comparison is against trigger figures that are not published openly.

There is no published minimum contribution. How a Debt Arrangement Scheme payment is calculated goes through the assessment step by step.

What people actually pay

AiB’s annual statistics for 2025-26 put the median monthly contribution at £260, up four per cent on the year before.

That is a median rather than a typical bill for you. Your figure comes from your own income and expenditure.

Everything that would otherwise be added. Interest, fees, penalties and other charges stop being owed on the debts in an approved programme, and they cease to be owed altogether if and when it completes.

When the freeze starts

AiB’s guidance is that interest, fees, penalties and charges are frozen from the date the application is recorded on the DAS Register, rather than from approval. Whether a Debt Arrangement Scheme freezes interest and charges covers the detail.

That is the point at which the balance stops growing. On a long programme it is where most of the value sits.

What that is worth

A programme running for years on a frozen balance is a different arithmetic from the same debt on a credit card rate. The saving is the interest that never accrues.

It is also the fees and penalties that would have been added along the way. Those stop from the same date.

The thing it does not do

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.

Where a page advertises a percentage written off by a Debt Arrangement Scheme, it is describing a different solution. The scheme has no write-off mechanism except composition, which needs twelve years and seventy per cent first.

Whether a Debt Arrangement Scheme writes off any of your debt deals with the advertised percentages.

Your continuing liabilities, and nothing else from the scheme. Varying a programme costs you nothing either.

Continuing liabilities

Your rent or mortgage payment, current council tax, utilities, insurance and child maintenance carry on as normal. Paying them when due is a standard condition under regulation 27(2)(c).

Nothing for the register, and nothing to end it

The DAS Register entry carries no charge to you, and no fee attaches to the notice of completion the payments distributor sends at the end.

Variations

Regulation 5(1) covers the fee for consideration of an application for approval or variation, and regulation 5(2) keeps it off the debtor. So a change of circumstances does not carry a charge to you.

Where AiB acts as the distributor

AiB’s fees guidance describes applying a 5 per cent fee for administration costs in that case, with the remaining 15 per cent able to be returned to the adviser organisation or remitted to the Scottish Government.

That split appears in guidance rather than in the regulations, which state a flat 20 per cent. Either way it changes nothing for you, because none of it is charged to the debtor.

The fee structure is unchanged for Business DAS. The distributor’s administration fee must be no more than 8 per cent, and the DAS Administrator’s 2 per cent applies as usual.

The rates and their dates, in one table

The part that is different for a business

Business Debtline says an insolvency practitioner will usually charge a fee for submitting a Business DAS application, and that those fees cannot be included in the programme.

Business DAS is for a legal person, trust or unincorporated body. A sole trader uses the ordinary scheme.

What Business DAS is covers who the business route is for, and why its consent rule is different too.

No. Free advice is available from the debt charities, and for an individual a money adviser may not charge for this work in any event.

What a fee-charging plan is instead

A Debt Management Plan is a different product. It is informal, it does not bind creditors, and providers may charge for it, which choosing between a Debt Arrangement Scheme and a Debt Management Plan sets out.

If a firm quotes you a fee for arranging a Debt Payment Programme, that is a reason to stop and check. Whether to use a free debt charity or a paid debt adviser covers the choice.

What to ask a firm that quotes a fee

Ask which product the fee is for, and whether it is a Debt Payment Programme under the Debt Arrangement Scheme or something else. The two are often discussed in the same conversation.

Where to get it free

Citizens Advice Scotland and National Debtline both publish guides to the scheme and neither charges for advice.

Our Debt Arrangement Scheme page explains how we help, and whether DAS fees are taken from your payment or added to your debt answers the question people ask next.