So a second creditor cannot serve a second schedule on your payroll. They have to apply for a conjoined arrestment order under Part III of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987, which is what the letter in your hand is about.

The sum itself comes from the same statutory tables that govern how much they can take from your wages. What changes is who collects the money and who it reaches.

One deduction leaves your pay each payday and goes to the sheriff clerk, who divides it between the creditors named in the order. Your employer never deals with those creditors directly.

What the sheriff clerk actually does

The sheriff clerk is the administrative office of the sheriff court, not the sheriff. Under a conjoined arrestment order the clerk receives the money from your employer, keeps the record of who is owed what, and pays it out.

That is the structural difference from an ordinary arrestment, where the money goes to the creditor or their sheriff officers. If a creditor tells you they have had nothing, the clerk’s office at your local sheriff court is the place to check.

What happens to the arrestment already running

The conjoined order takes over from the existing earnings arrestment against that employment. Payroll stops paying the old creditor and starts paying the sheriff clerk.

The line on your payslip may change its name. The amount coming off does not double.

An ordinary arrestment and a conjoined order, side by side

The table below shows which parts change and which stay exactly as they were.

When an earnings arrestment is already running against your wages and another creditor wants a share of it. They cannot simply serve their own schedule on your employer and take a second slice.

What has to be in place first

There has to be a diligence against your earnings from that job already. Without one there is nothing to conjoin, and the second creditor would use an ordinary earnings arrestment.

Each creditor also has to be in a position to enforce in the first place. Our guide to which creditors can apply for a wage arrestment sets out who reaches that stage and how.

Where this comes up most often

Two years of council tax arrears chased by two different sheriff officer firms is the common one. So is council tax sitting alongside an older court decree, because a summary warrant needs no charge for payment and often overtakes a debt that has been around longer.

Those balances also carry the 10% statutory surcharge added when the warrant is granted. Our council tax debt advice page covers what a council looks at before it gets that far.

What about maintenance?

A current maintenance arrestment, used to collect ongoing maintenance under sections 51 to 53 of the same Act, is the recognised exception. It can run alongside an ordinary earnings arrestment.

The protected daily rate for one of those is £24.66. Once a conjoined order is in force, a separate current maintenance arrestment against that job is not competent.

Exactly what an ordinary earnings arrestment would take. The statutory tables are applied to your net pay, nothing comes off the first £750.00 a month, and the number of creditors makes no difference to the figure.

The monthly deduction table, from 6 April 2025

These figures were substituted into Schedule 2 by the Diligence against Earnings (Variation) (Scotland) Regulations 2024. They came into force on 6 April 2025 and were still the live figures in August 2026.

Net earnings means pay after income tax, National Insurance and pension contributions. Gross salary is never the starting figure.

Three worked figures

On £1,800.00 net a month the deduction is £172.50, made up of £112.50 plus 20% of the £300.00 above £1,500.00. On £2,200.00 net it comes to £252.50.

On £900.00 net a month it is £22.50. Run your own number through the wage arrestment calculator if your pay moves about.

Weekly and daily pay

Weekly paid workers are assessed under the weekly table, where nothing is taken at or below £172.61. On £400.00 net a week the deduction is £36.85.

There is no fortnightly table in Schedule 2. Payroll normally uses the daily table instead.

The sheriff clerk takes in the single deduction and pays the creditors in the order out of it. The pot is divided rather than multiplied, so another creditor means smaller shares of the same money.

An illustration on £1,900.00 net a month

Take someone on £1,900.00 net a month with two creditors in the order. The monthly deduction is £192.50, fixed by the table rather than by the size of the debts.

The shares below are worked out in proportion to the balances, purely to show the shape of it. The sheriff clerk holds the record and determines what each creditor actually receives.

What an illustration shows when a third creditor joins

The deduction stays at £192.50 whatever the split. On the same proportional basis every share gets smaller, and the balances take longer to clear.

On that illustration the council tax share would fall from £57.75 to £50.22 a month while your payslip looks identical. Whatever apportionment the sheriff clerk applies, how long a wage arrestment lasts stretches once the same money is clearing more than one balance.

Checking what has reached your creditors

Your payslip proves what left your wages. It does not prove what the clerk has paid out.

Ask the sheriff clerk’s office for the position on the order if a balance looks wrong. Keep the payslips as your evidence.

They have to operate it and send the money to the sheriff clerk, and they may take £1.00 from your pay for each deduction. An employer who refuses to comply becomes liable for the sums they should have deducted.

The £1.00 administration charge

It comes off on top of the arrested amount rather than out of it, so it costs you £12.00 over a year of monthly pay without touching the debt. Employers are not obliged to take it, so check your payslip.

Who at work finds out

Only payroll and whoever processes the paperwork need to know. It appears on your payslip as a deduction, so you see it.

There is no law allowing an employer to dismiss someone for having money arrested from their wages. Guidance on debt and decrees is worth a read if you think payroll has misapplied the order.

Yes, but the routes are narrower than for an ordinary earnings arrestment. A conjoined order bars a Debt Arrangement Scheme application, subject to an exception in the regulations, which rules out the option most people are pointed at first.

The Debt Arrangement Scheme problem

Where no conjoined order exists, an approved Debt Payment Programme under the Debt Arrangement Scheme stops an existing earnings arrestment and blocks new diligence. An ordinary arrestment is no bar to applying.

A conjoined arrestment order is different. The DAS regulations bar an application from someone already subject to one, apart from an exception in the regulations, so an approved money adviser or the Accountant in Bankruptcy needs to check your paperwork before you count on it.

So the timing matters. Applying while a single arrestment is running is a different position from applying after the order is granted.

The statutory moratorium

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.

It does not stop a creditor obtaining a decree, and interest and charges keep accruing throughout.

Whether a creditor can carry on an earnings arrestment your employer is already operating is treated differently in the Accountant in Bankruptcy’s adviser guidance from the general statement of the rule. Ask a money adviser to confirm the position on your facts before relying on it.

Trust deeds, sequestration and Minimal Asset Process

A protected trust deed ends an earnings arrestment, a current maintenance arrestment or a conjoined order on the date of protection, under s.173 of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016. Between signing and protection you are still exposed, which is why a statutory moratorium normally runs alongside.

Sequestration does the same on the date of sequestration under s.72(2) of the 1987 Act, and Minimal Asset Process counts as sequestration. The order is replaced by a Debtor Contribution Order.

Sums already paid to the sheriff clerk before that date are still distributed to the creditors. Money already deducted is credited against what you owe rather than refunded.

What there is no route for

There is no affordability or hardship ground against a deduction under the statutory tables. A sheriff cannot lower a Schedule 2 figure because it is more than you can manage.

Against an earnings arrestment the review powers sit in s.50 of the 1987 Act: a declarator that it is invalid or has ceased to have effect, and a determination of a dispute about how it is operated. Neither is an affordability ground.

Check who the creditors are and that each debt is genuinely yours, then work the deduction out from your own net pay before the first payday. Doing nothing is the only option with no upside.

Check the balances, not just the names

Council tax debt carries the 10% surcharge added when the summary warrant is granted, and sheriff officer fees are set by the court and added to what you owe. The balance in the order is often well above the original bill.

Ask for a statement showing the debt, the surcharge and the expenses separately. Our guide to council tax billing and collection sets out the notices that should have arrived first.

Work out the number before the letter does it for you

Find your net pay in the monthly table above and read the deduction off it. What is left is the figure your budget has to work with.

Take the whole picture to an adviser

More than one creditor at the enforcement stage is the point to look at every debt together.

It matters for other deductions too. A DWP direct earnings attachment ranks behind a conjoined order in Scotland, and where existing orders already take 40% or more of your net earnings nothing is deducted for it that period.