Old debts get bought and sold. A company you have never dealt with writing to you about a catalogue account from a decade ago is normal rather than a scam in itself.

What matters is whether the debt is still legally enforceable, and whether anything you do next changes that. A friendly call agreeing to pay a fiver a month can revive a debt that was already dead, so check first and reply second, and when a debt becomes statute barred in Scotland sets out the background.

Under section 6 of the 1973 Act most consumer debts are extinguished after five continuous years with no relevant claim and no relevant acknowledgement. Scotland’s rule wipes out the obligation itself rather than only barring court action, which is a stronger position than south of the border.

What the short prescription reaches

Credit cards, personal loans, overdrafts, catalogue accounts and store cards all sit under section 6. They are obligations arising from a contract, which is what paragraph 1(g) of Schedule 1 covers.

Extinguished means gone. There is nothing left to sue on, provided nothing interrupted the five years while they were running.

The three things that interrupt it

• A relevant claim, which in practice means a court action or the execution of diligence.
• A payment towards the debt, however small.
• An unequivocal written admission by you that the obligation still subsists.

Working out exactly when the five years began is the part people get wrong on their own. That is the reason to take advice before replying rather than after.

The creditor does. Since 28 February 2025 the burden of proof on that question sits with the creditor rather than with you.

What section 13A changed

Section 13A, inserted on the same date, puts the burden on the creditor. Where a question arises about whether an obligation has been extinguished, it is presumed to have been extinguished unless the creditor proves otherwise.

That is a change in who has to produce the paperwork, and it applies to the five-year period and the twenty-year period alike. The provision is at section 13A of the 1973 Act.

What it does not mean

It does not mean an old debt is automatically written off, and it does not mean you can ignore a court action. A presumption is something a creditor can displace with evidence.

It does mean the question has changed shape. It is no longer only whether you can show the debt is old, but whether they can show it is alive.

On a five-year consumer debt, a payment or an unequivocal written admission restarts the period. A phone call is not a written admission, and asking a creditor to prove the debt is not an admission either.

Section 10(1), read precisely

Section 10(1) of the 1973 Act says an obligation is relevantly acknowledged if, and only if, there has been performance clearly indicating that it still subsists, or an unequivocal written admission that it still subsists. It is at section 10.

Making a payment is the classic way to restart a five-year clock, and a collector asking for a token payment as a gesture of good faith is asking for exactly that. It has to be made to the creditor or their agent to count.

Words alone are not enough. A remark on the phone is not a written admission, and neither is asking for a copy of the agreement or asking whether the debt has prescribed.

What each event does to which clock

A payment or a written acknowledgement does not affect the twenty-year period at all. Section 10(1) of the 1973 Act now applies only for the purposes of sections 6 and 8A, and section 7 is not among them, so acknowledgement has no part in the twenty-year rule.

A trap for joint debtors

Section 10(2) treats the two limbs differently. A payment by one of several joint debtors binds all of them, while a written admission binds only the person who made it.

That matters for a separated couple with a joint account or a joint council tax liability. Whether you can be chased for a former partner’s council tax covers the council tax side.

What to avoid until you have advice

• Do not make any payment, including a token amount or a card payment over the phone.
• Do not write anything agreeing that the debt is yours or that a particular sum is owed.
• Do not ignore the letter entirely either, because a court action can proceed without you.

More than people expect. Council tax and non-domestic rates run to twenty years, and decrees, Crown taxes, benefit and tax credit overpayments and child support maintenance are all excluded from the five years by Schedule 1 to the 1973 Act.

The exclusions, in one place

The list is in Schedule 1 to the 1973 Act, and the council tax exclusion at paragraph 2(fd) was itself inserted on 28 February 2025 to preserve the existing position against a new general rule.

Council tax runs on a different, and newly rewritten, clock

Council tax sits on the twenty-year long negative prescription in section 7 of the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973, because Schedule 1 paragraph 2(fd) excludes it from the five-year rule that clears most consumer debt.

Enforcement does not send the clock back to the start. Since 28 February 2025 a relevant claim, which includes executing diligence, extends the twenty-year period until that claim is finally disposed of.

Before that date it restarted the period, and a great deal of published advice has not caught up. Section 7 as it now stands is at section 7 of the 1973 Act, and what the 20-year rule for council tax debt is goes through it.

Do not try to fix a start date for a twenty-year clock yourself. That is a question about your own account, and how far back a council can chase council tax arrears explains why the dates are the whole argument.

In writing, asking for proof of the debt and of the assignation to whoever is writing to you, without admitting anything. Keep every letter, and take the whole file to a free money adviser before you agree to a single thing.

What to ask for

• A copy of the original credit agreement, or the original account details.
• A full statement of account showing the date of the last payment and the last activity.
• Evidence that the debt was assigned to the company now contacting you.
• Confirmation of what the balance is made up of, including any interest and charges added.

The date of the last payment is the number that decides most of these cases. That is why it belongs at the top of the list.

If the debt has prescribed, say so in terms

Where an adviser confirms the five years have run, the letter says that the obligation has been extinguished under section 6 of the 1973 Act and that you will not be paying it. Under CONC 7.15 a regulated firm must then stop demanding payment.

Word it so that it does not admit the obligation subsists. That is hard to do safely alone, and it is one of the things a free adviser will draft for you.

Keep the paperwork organised

Put every letter in one place with the envelopes and the dates. If the account did prescribe you may need to show a chronology, and reconstructing one later from memory is very hard.

Take notes of phone calls too, including who you spoke to and when. A call you did not record is still evidence if you wrote it down at the time.

A firm the Financial Conduct Authority regulates is bound by the CONC rules on arrears, disputes and contact. Those rules do not reach a council collecting council tax or a sheriff officer executing diligence, which is the commonest misunderstanding on this subject.

The rules worth knowing by number

The contact and conduct rules are at CONC 7.9 and the disputed-debt rules at CONC 7.5. CONC 7.15.3G expressly recognises that a prescribed debt in Scotland ceases to exist.

Who CONC does not bind

It binds the collection agency, the bank, the card issuer and the debt purchaser. It does not bind a Scottish council, and it does not bind a sheriff officer, who is regulated instead under Part V of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987.

Debt collectors are not sheriff officers and neither of them is a bailiff. Whether sheriff officers are the same as bailiffs sets the difference out, and complaints about an officer go through the Society of Messengers-at-Arms and Sheriff Officers.

Nothing special. It has to raise a court action, obtain a decree and serve a charge for payment, which gives you 14 days to pay if you are in the United Kingdom, before it can execute any diligence.

The ordinary route, step by step

Only after the charge has expired can an ordinary creditor use an earnings arrestment, a bank arrestment or an attachment of goods. A charge remains valid for diligence for two years from service, and what a charge for payment is covers it.

Council tax is the exception and it is the reason old council tax letters need attention sooner. A council applies for a summary warrant with no hearing, a 10% statutory addition goes on, and it can move to an earnings arrestment without a charge, as what a bank arrestment in Scotland is and our council tax debt advice page explain.

Assignation, and a change nobody has caught up with

Since 1 April 2025 section 3 of the Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Act 2023 lets an assignation transfer a claim either on intimation to you or on registration in the new Register of Assignations.

So they never wrote to me is no longer a safe assumption on its own. A regulated firm still has to give notice of an assignation of a regulated credit agreement.

If a court action does arrive

Respond to it, because that is the moment to state that the debt has prescribed. A time to pay direction can be asked for when the action is raised, and after decree a time to pay order is the equivalent route for debts of £25,000 or less excluding interest.

Where the sheriff grants a time to pay order, the sheriff must recall any existing earnings arrestment. Whether an application is competent on your facts is one for a money adviser.