What Should An Employer Do If They Receive An Arrestment Schedule?

The duty is narrow. Section 47(1) requires a deduction on every pay day and payment over as soon as is reasonably practicable, and nothing else.

Here is the running order from the day it arrives, what to do with anything that turns up afterwards, and when the deducting stops. An employer’s legal duties for a wage arrestment sets out the duty itself, with the paragraph each part sits in.

What are the first steps once the schedule arrives?

Date-stamp it, get a copy to payroll, and work out which pay day the first deduction belongs to. The arrestment takes effect on the date it is served, so the practical work has to happen before the next pay run.

A practical order of work, alongside the statutory duty

Steps five to seven are the statutory duty in section 47(1). The rest is housekeeping that makes the duty easier to run.

Who inside the business needs to see it

Only payroll and whoever processes the paperwork. Whether your colleagues find out about a wage arrestment covers the confidentiality point from the employee’s side.

It is not a conduct matter and it is not a performance matter. Whether an employer can sack someone for having a wage arrestment sets out why, including regulated roles where fitness and propriety checks apply.

Setting it up as a recalculation, not a standing amount

The deduction is worked out again from that period’s own net earnings every time the employee is paid. A standing figure carried forward from last period is not what the table produces.

Overtime, a bonus, unpaid leave and a change in pension contributions all move the number. So does a period that falls in the nil band.

Speaking to the employee

The employee can be told which deduction is starting and pointed at free money advice. Whether a wage arrestment shows on your payslip sets out the questions worth putting and what each answer establishes.

What should be checked, and what if something looks wrong?

Confirm the arrestment relates to your business and to someone on your payroll. Raise any error in writing with the creditor or the firm that served the schedule.

A query is not a refusal

Raising an error is legitimate and it is a different thing from declining to operate a valid schedule. The duty and the query run alongside each other rather than one suspending the other.

Where the arrestment relates to someone who has never worked for you, say so in writing to the creditor or to the firm that served it. What an earnings arrestment schedule is covers the document and who serves it.

Who serves them

Sheriff officers are officers of the court, appointed by and accountable to the sheriff, and they are not bailiffs. Our sheriff officer advice pages cover the firms Scottish councils instruct.

A schedule for council tax arrears normally follows a summary warrant granted by the sheriff court on the council’s application.

How do you calculate the deduction each pay period?

Take net earnings for the period, then apply the statutory table that matches the frequency you actually pay on. Net earnings is a defined figure rather than take-home pay.

The figure the table is applied to

Pay for the period after income tax, National Insurance primary class 1 contributions, pension scheme contributions and a priority child maintenance deduction from earnings order. What counts as net earnings sets out the four items with their paragraphs.

Student loan repayments, union dues and the £1.00 administration charge are not among the four deductions that produce net earnings. So none of them reduces the figure the table is applied to.

The tables and the thresholds

The tables sit in Schedule 2 to the 1987 Act as substituted by the Diligence against Earnings (Variation) (Scotland) Regulations 2024, in force since 6 April 2025. Net earnings not exceeding £750.00 a month, £172.61 a week or £24.66 a day produce no deduction.

Net monthly earnings of £2,200.00 produce £252.50, and net weekly earnings of £400.00 produce £36.85. How much can be taken from wages in Scotland sets out every band.

Frequency, rounding and nil periods

There is no fortnightly table. Fortnightly pay is normally handled using the daily table or by applying the weekly table to each week in the period, following your own payroll guidance.

Round to two decimal places of a penny and then to the nearest whole penny, with an exact half penny rounded down. Net monthly earnings of £749.00 produce nothing at all.

A nil period does not end the arrestment, and the calculation is simply run again next time. What happens if earnings fall below the threshold covers that position.

Where does the money go, and how quickly?

To the creditor, as soon as is reasonably practicable after each deduction. Section 47(1) sets the timing as a standard rather than as a fixed number of days.

The one exception to paying the creditor

A conjoined arrestment order is administered by the sheriff clerk, who receives the money from the employer and distributes it among the creditors involved.

Whether you can have more than one deduction at the same time works through the combinations, and the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 contains all three arrestments in the same Part.

The £1.00 administration charge

An employer may deduct £1.00 per deduction as an administration charge, taken from the employee’s pay on top of the arrested amount. Sheriff officer expenses are a separate matter, and whether sheriff officer fees are added to the balance covers where they sit.

Records worth keeping

• The date the schedule was served, and the schedule itself.
• The net earnings figure used for each period and the table applied to it.
• Each deduction, each administration charge and each payment made.
• Any correspondence with the creditor or the sheriff officers.

Questions about totals can surface a long time later. Records are what settles them quickly.

What should payroll do if a second instrument arrives?

Only one diligence against earnings can operate against the same employment at a time, and a current maintenance arrestment is the exception that can run alongside an ordinary earnings arrestment.

What each one is, and what it means for this payroll

Three floors that are not the same floor

An earnings arrestment has a fixed cash nil band and no percentage cap, while a direct earnings attachment and a child maintenance order work to a 60% retained earnings rule. Which arrestment takes priority sets out the sequence and keeps the floors apart.

The DWP publishes an employer’s guide to direct earnings attachments, and what a direct earnings attachment is covers how it differs from an arrestment.

When does an employer stop deducting?

When the arrestment ceases to have effect. Section 47(2) names payment or extinction of the debt, the employee ceasing to be employed by you, recall and abandonment.

Each route, and the date it takes effect

The moratorium row is the one to read twice

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.

The exception sits in section 197 of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016, which leaves it competent to execute an arrestment that came into effect before the moratorium period began.

When the employee leaves

The arrestment falls with that employment, and tracing a new employer sits with the creditor. What happens to a wage arrestment if you leave your job and whether a new employer has to continue one take each side of it.

What happens if an employer gets it wrong?

Failing to deduct or under-deducting leaves the employer liable for the sums that should have been deducted. The cost of ignoring a schedule lands on the business rather than on the employee.

Where the errors come from

The pay frequency and the net earnings figure are the two inputs worth checking each period. Both move when overtime, sick pay or a short month change what is actually paid.

A dispute about how an arrestment is being operated goes to the sheriff under section 50(3), and section 50(1) is the declarator that it is invalid or has ceased to have effect. Challenging a wage arrestment you think is wrong sets out what each application is for.

What an employer cannot fix, and where the employee should go

Section 50 carries no affordability or hardship ground, and a sheriff cannot reduce a Schedule 2 deduction because the debtor cannot afford it. An employee asking payroll for a smaller figure is asking the wrong part of the chain.

An approved Debt Payment Programme under the Debt Arrangement Scheme stops an existing earnings arrestment, and a protected trust deed ends one on the date of protection.

How you stop a wage arrestment in Scotland sets out each route, and the statutory schemes are registered with the Accountant in Bankruptcy.