The Act does not leave the gap open. Section 49 tells the employer exactly what to do with a pay interval that is neither a week nor a month.

Two-weekly pay is ordinary in construction, care, hospitality and agency work, and it is why fortnightly workers get such inconsistent answers about what will come out. How a wage arrestment is calculated on weekly pay covers the table this ends up using.

Here is what the subsection says, what the figures look like on real fortnightly pay, and what to do when the deduction does not look right.

No. Schedule 2 to the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 contains three tables, weekly, monthly and daily, and there is no fortnightly one.

Three tables, five situations

The tables were last substituted by the Diligence against Earnings (Variation) (Scotland) Regulations 2024, SSI 2024/293, in force from 6 April 2025 and still in force in August 2026.

Section 49 then maps every pay interval onto one of the three. Five of them are set out below, and a fortnight is squarely inside the third.

Why halving the monthly figure gives the wrong answer

The bands are not proportional across the three tables. The monthly nil band is £750.00, while two weeks of the weekly nil band is £345.22, so a fortnight is not half a month in any useful sense.

Section 49 does not offer a choice between the tables either. It says what the sum shall be, and the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 ties each interval to one method.

Divide, read, multiply. Section 49(1)(c) applies where earnings are payable at regular intervals of a whole number of weeks or months, and a fortnight is two whole weeks.

The three steps in the subsection

• Divide the net earnings payable on the pay-day by the whole number of weeks in the interval, which for a fortnight is two.
• Take the sum in column 2 of Table A opposite the band that the resulting notional weekly figure falls into.
• Multiply that sum by the same whole number of weeks.

That is the whole mechanism, and it is the reason the answer comes out the same as applying the weekly table to each of the two weeks.

Where the daily table actually belongs

Table C is not the Act’s answer to a fortnight. Section 49(2) reserves it for a regular interval that is not a whole number of weeks or months, such as a ten-day cycle.

Section 49(3) then covers irregular intervals, dividing by the number of days since earnings were last paid. Both routes end in Table C because a day is the only unit that fits an awkward period.

Plenty of published advice offers the daily table as the fortnightly method, and the two routes land within pennies of one another, so the difference rarely shows on a payslip. How are zero-hours workers affected by a wage arrestment covers the irregular case in its own right.

Four-weekly pay is the same subsection

Four weeks is also a whole number of weeks, so the employer divides by four, reads Table A, and multiplies by four. Thirteen pay periods a year rather than twelve is the only practical difference.

Net pay of £800 for the fortnight gives £400 a week, which produces £36.85 under Table A, so £73.70 comes out for the period.

The weekly table, as it stands

Halve the fortnightly net figure, find the band, work out the deduction, then double it. Nothing more elaborate than that is happening in payroll.

Four fortnightly wages compared

Notice how sharply the nil band matters. Two weeks at or under £172.61 a week produces nothing at all, and what happens to a wage arrestment if you earn below the threshold goes through that in detail.

The nil band on a fortnight

There is no fortnightly nil band as such. On the statutory method the figure that matters is £172.61 a week, so a fortnight of £345.22 or less produces no deduction.

That threshold is a fixed cash amount rather than a percentage, which is why it does most of its work at lower incomes.

Rounding, and where in the sum it is applied. A gap of pennies between two systems is normal and a gap of tens of pounds is not.

Where the differences creep in

• Rounding at each step of the calculation rather than only at the end.
• A period with an unusual number of days, such as a rescheduled payday.
• Whether the employer is taking its £1.00 administration charge, which is a separate line and not part of the arrested amount.
• Whether a second deduction order is running against the same pay.

The rounding rule itself

Calculations run to two decimal places of a penny and are then rounded to the nearest whole penny. An exact half-penny rounds down.

Anything larger than that is worth raising, and what happens if your employer deducts the wrong amount sets out how to put it right.

The arrested amount as its own named deduction line, separate from tax, National Insurance and pension, with the employer’s £1.00 charge on a line of its own where it is taken.

Net earnings is a defined figure, not take-home pay

Section 73(1) of the 1987 Act defines net earnings as what is left after exactly four deductions. Nothing else comes off before the table is applied.

People often compare their gross fortnightly figure to the table and get a fright. What counts as net earnings for a wage arrestment sets out the four items and what falls outside them.

What to check each fortnight

• The net figure for the period, because that is the number the table works from.
• The deduction itself, checked against the weekly table on half your fortnightly net pay.
• Whether the £1.00 employer charge has been taken, and whether it has been taken once.
• Whether any other order, such as a Direct Earnings Attachment, is running alongside.

Ask payroll which table they applied and what net figure they applied it to. Most fortnightly errors come from the wrong table being picked rather than from any dispute about the debt.

A short script for payroll

• Which table did you apply to my pay for this period, and did you divide the fortnightly figure first?
• What net earnings figure did you use?
• Is the £1.00 administration charge being taken as well?
• Is more than one deduction order running against my wages?

The seven-day rule that explains a missing first deduction

Where a pay-day falls within seven days of the schedule being served, section 69(2) entitles the employer to skip that pay-day. It is entitled to, not required to, so some employers deduct and some do not.

Section 69(3) then says a skipped pay-day is gone for good. The employer may not add the missed period to a later deduction, and an employer that tries a double deduction is acting outside the Act.

If payroll cannot resolve it

Section 50(3) of the 1987 Act allows an application to the sheriff to determine a dispute about how an arrestment is being operated, on Form 33 under rule 41(1). Section 50(1) covers a declarator that the arrestment is invalid or has ceased to have effect, on Form 32 under rule 40(1).

Both forms sit in the court rules published by the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service, and the sheriff clerk can explain them without giving legal advice.

Neither route is about affordability, and there is no deadline on either. Is there a time limit for challenging a wage arrestment covers the clocks that do exist.

Payroll cannot switch the arrestment off for you in any event. Section 47(1) puts the duty to deduct on the employer, and an employer that fails to deduct becomes liable for the sums it should have taken.

The same routes as any other pay cycle. Pay frequency changes the arithmetic and changes nothing about which solutions are open to you.

The four statutory stops

An approved Debt Payment Programme under the Debt Arrangement Scheme stops an existing earnings arrestment, freezes interest and charges, and does not require you to be insolvent.

• Sequestration, including the Minimal Asset Process, ends an existing arrestment on the date of sequestration under section 72(2) of the 1987 Act.
• A protected trust deed ends it on the date of protection under section 173 of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016, not on the date of signing.
• Where a sheriff makes a time to pay order, the sheriff shall recall any existing earnings arrestment. The debt outstanding must be £25,000 or less, excluding interest.

The moratorium, and the one thing it does not reach

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.

A statutory moratorium is the exception. It does not stop an earnings arrestment that was already running, because section 197(5)(d) of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016 lets a creditor carry on executing an arrestment that came into effect before the moratorium began.

What is not available

There is no hardship route against an earnings arrestment itself. Section 46(2) of the 1987 Act abolished the old subsistence exemption and replaced it with the fixed bands in Schedule 2.

So a sheriff cannot lower a Schedule 2 deduction because money is tight, which is exactly why the routes above exist. Which debt solution is best if you have a wage arrestment compares them, and our solutions page sets out how we help.