Diligence in Scotland: arrestment and sheriff officers

In Scotland, the enforcement of a court debt is called diligence. It is the set of legal tools a creditor can use once a court has ordered you to pay: arresting part of your wages, freezing money in your bank account, attaching (taking and selling) goods you own, or, at the far end, petitioning for your bankruptcy¹. Diligence cannot begin the moment a court order is granted. The creditor must first serve a formal warning called a charge for payment, which usually gives you 14 days to pay in full, and that window is also the main opportunity to apply for a time to pay order and stop enforcement altogether¹.

The people who carry out diligence are sheriff officers, not bailiffs. Bailiffs and enforcement agents belong to the system used in England and Wales; the UK Government's own guidance on bailiffs confirms there is a different process in Scotland². Sheriff officers are officers of the court who enforce its orders, and their powers, and your rights against them, are set out in Scottish law and guidance³.

This page explains each stage: how diligence starts, what an earnings arrestment does to your wages and how much can be taken, when a sheriff officer can enter your home and what they can remove, how time to pay orders work, and where to complain or get free advice. The rules described here apply in Scotland only. If you live in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, the equivalents are bailiffs and enforcement agents and attachment of earnings orders.

How diligence starts: decree, then a charge for payment

Before any enforcement, the creditor needs a court order. In most cases that is a decree, granted by the sheriff court after a claim has been served on you and either undefended or decided against you. Some creditors, including local authorities chasing council tax and Revenue Scotland chasing tax debts, can instead apply to the sheriff court for a summary warrant, a faster route that does not require an ordinary court action⁵. If you receive a sheriff court claim, responding within the time limit matters, because a decree can be granted in your absence.

A decree on its own does not let the creditor take your wages or your goods. Diligence cannot begin until a "charge for payment" has been issued against you. This is a formal document, served by a sheriff officer, telling you to pay the debt in full within a set period, usually 14 days¹. Only once that period expires without payment can the creditor instruct diligence.

The charge for payment is also the point at which several protections can be triggered. Applying for a time to pay order (covered below) is done after the charge has been served⁵. Certain creditors have extra duties before particular steps: a council must send you a copy of the Scottish Government's Debt Advice and Information Package before taking an inhibition against your home, alongside applying for the decree and serving the charge⁵. And there is a wider brake on the whole system: sections 195 to 198 of the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016 allow for a moratorium on diligence, a period during which most enforcement is paused while you get debt advice⁸. The Bankruptcy and Diligence (Scotland) Act 2024 has since added a mental health moratorium to the statute book, extending that idea to people in mental health crisis⁹.

Once the debt is paid, the enforcement trail does not close itself. If a decree has been entered on the register of judgments and you pay it in full, you need a letter of satisfaction from the pursuer or their solicitor, sent to Registry Trust Limited with the administration fee and confirmation of your name and address at the time of the decree, before the entry is marked satisfied¹². The guide to court enforcement across the UK explains how the Scottish process compares with the county court system.

Sheriff officers, not bailiffs

A sheriff officer is a court official appointed to enforce the orders of the sheriff court. Mygov.scot guidance is explicit that a sheriff officer is different both from the police and from a bailiff, and that bailiffs do not apply in Scotland³. The UK Government's bailiffs guidance points Scottish readers to the separate Scottish process for the same reason².

Sheriff officers start diligence to enforce three broad things: the recovery of money owed, the recovery of goods such as hire purchase items, and repossession of your home¹. They also serve and issue court papers, either by hand or by first class recorded delivery¹. That means the first contact many people have with a sheriff officer is not a doorstep visit but a document arriving in the post, and any document served this way can be the start of a formal process with deadlines attached.

Because they are officers of the court, sheriff officers are not the creditor's agent in the way a private debt collector is. They act under the authority of court documents, and their fees are regulated. But they are paid from the enforcement process, and the rules on what they may do are strict precisely because the consequences for the person on the receiving end are serious. The comparison page on bailiffs, enforcement agents and sheriff officers sets the two systems side by side, and the rules on how creditors must treat you when you fall behind apply to the creditor's own conduct before enforcement ever reaches a sheriff officer.

Earnings arrestment: your employer pays the debt from your wages

An earnings arrestment is the Scottish equivalent of an attachment of earnings order. Once it is served, it instructs your employer to deduct money straight from your wages¹³. Under the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987, the arrestment requires the employer, while it is in effect, to deduct a sum calculated under section 49 of that Act from your net earnings on every pay day and pay it to the creditor⁴. In the fine enforcement version used by the courts, the employer sends the money to the court, which passes it on¹³.

The arrestment takes effect on the date it is executed, which is the date the arrestment schedule is served on your employer⁴. It remains in effect until the debt is paid or otherwise extinguished, until you leave that employment, or until the arrestment is recalled or abandoned⁴. So it is not a one-off deduction: it continues pay day after pay day until the debt is cleared.

What the arrestment recovers is defined by the Act. The debt recoverable consists of the ordinary debt and expenses due under the decree, interest accrued at the date of execution, and the expenses of executing the arrestment and the preceding charge⁴. A creditor can enforce more than one debt owed to them by the same debtor through a single earnings arrestment⁴. For arrears of maintenance, the ordinary debt is the arrears less any sum you are entitled to deduct in respect of income tax⁴.

Deductions are made from your net income, meaning the income you have left after paying income tax and National Insurance⁵. The practical consequence is that the arrestment bites on take-home pay, and the deduction tables used to calculate it are built around that.

Two things about the employer relationship are worth knowing. First, your employer will know about the debt, because the schedule is served on them and they must operate it. Second, the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service notes that an earnings arrestment order may be considered a disciplinary matter by some employers¹³. That is not the norm, but for people in certain roles, especially those handling money or in regulated positions, it is a real consideration, and it is one reason people sometimes prefer to deal with a debt before enforcement reaches this stage. The pages on informal payment arrangements and debt management plans cover the earlier options.

How much can be taken from your wages

The amount deducted is not a flat percentage of everything you earn. It is worked out from deduction tables with protected bands: below a threshold, nothing is taken at all, and above it, the deduction is a fixed sum plus a percentage of the earnings above the band. The tables come in weekly, monthly and daily versions, depending on how often you are paid.

The figures are updated periodically by regulations. The Diligence against Earnings (Variation) (Scotland) Regulations 2023, which came into force on 6 April 2023, set the current weekly and monthly tables. In the weekly table, earnings exceeding £545.57 but not exceeding £820.21 attract a deduction of £74.98 plus 23% of earnings exceeding £545.57¹⁴. In the monthly table, earnings exceeding £2,370.49 but not exceeding £3,563.83 attract £325.79 plus 23% of earnings exceeding £2,370.49¹⁴. The daily table works on the same principle with smaller figures.

The structure of the tables, and the protected minimum below which nothing is deducted, was reshaped by the 2021 regulations. Those set the weekly threshold at £130.73 and the monthly threshold at £566.51, replacing the previous £529.90 monthly figure, and their policy note explains that the tables are based on average earnings increases rather than inflation¹⁵. In the 2021 daily table, for example, daily earnings exceeding £18.63 but not exceeding £67.32 attracted the greater of £0.50 or 19% of earnings exceeding £18.63¹⁵.

The tables have been changed again more recently. The Diligence against Earnings (Variation) (Scotland) Regulations 2024 took effect from the beginning of the financial year in April 2025, and their policy note states the outcome: people subject to an earnings arrestment on a low income will be able to retain more of their earnings after the arrestment takes effect¹⁶. The same note is clear about what the change does not do. It does not affect the amount of debt to be repaid, but it may increase the time over which it is repaid for people on a low income¹⁶. The arrestment is made at a fixed rate and does not factor in whether the earner has any dependents¹⁶.

There is a transitional point that matters if an arrestment was already running. The 2024 regulations do not apply to existing diligences until the new tables are intimated to employers, unless an employer chooses to apply them; until then, the figures substituted by the previous regulations continue¹⁷. So two people on identical wages can have different deductions if their arrestments started at different times.

Who earnings arrestment cannot be used against

An earnings arrestment only works against earnings, so it cannot be used against someone with no employer: it ends, as noted above, when the debtor ceases to be employed⁴. It also cannot be used against companies and similar bodies in the way it applies to individuals, since the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016 provides that it is not competent to sequestrate the estate of a company registered under the Companies Act 2006, a limited liability partnership, or other entities where an enactment provides sequestration is incompetent¹⁸.

There are also rules around who may take payments from a debtor in enforcement situations. The FCA's consumer credit sourcebook (CONC 8) restricts the ways firms and their associates may demand or take payments from debtors, but that prohibition has exclusions: it does not apply to payments made pursuant to an enactment, payments in relation to the administration by a money adviser approved under the Debt Arrangement Scheme (Scotland) Regulations 2011, or payments taken by officers of the Insolvency Service, the Accountant in Bankruptcy or the Insolvency Service (Northern Ireland)¹⁹. In practice this means payments under a court-ordered diligence, or under the Debt Arrangement Scheme, sit outside rules that would otherwise restrict how a creditor collects.

For people whose income is not earnings from employment, other routes exist on the creditor side, but so do protections: the moratorium on diligence pauses most enforcement while advice is sought⁸, and deductions from benefits are subject to their own limits, covered in how much can be deducted from Universal Credit.

When sheriff officers can enter your home

The rules on entry are among the strictest parts of Scottish diligence, and they are conditions, not courtesies. A sheriff officer can only break into your home when instructed by a court order and when the type of diligence is an exceptional attachment of goods¹. Before they try to gain entry, they must give you at least 4 days notice¹. They must not enter your home if the only person there is under 16 years old¹. And if they do break in, they must leave your home secure and locked¹.

Exceptional attachment is deliberately narrow: it is the only form of diligence that permits forced entry, and it requires the court's specific instruction for that purpose. For ordinary attachment, which applies to goods outside the home, forced entry to a dwelling is not part of the process at all.

If a sheriff officer visits, you have the right to ask for identification and to check the paperwork. You also have the right to try to stop further action on the spot: by contacting the person or company you owe money and coming to an arrangement, or by making a payment directly to the sheriff officer towards the debt, while the officer is there²⁰. The officer cannot simply wave that away, though any arrangement to stop enforcement needs the creditor's consent¹.

What sheriff officers can and cannot take

The basic rule of attachment is ownership. A sheriff officer can only take and sell things that belong to you²⁰. They cannot take goods from inside or outside your home when there is proof the goods do not belong to you¹. If they want to take something belonging to someone else, you need to prove it is not yours, which in practice means having evidence ready: receipts, hire purchase agreements, or a declaration from the owner²⁰.

The police have a defined and limited role. The police cannot help the sheriff officer carry out their order, but they can arrest you if you break the law, for example if you cause a breach of the peace²⁰. So an officer being accompanied by police does not mean the police are enforcing the debt, and obstructing an officer does not help your position.

What this means day to day is that goods on hire purchase, or belonging to a partner, a housemate or a family member, are not automatically safe just because they are in your home: the burden of proof sits with you. Proof of ownership, such as receipts, hire purchase agreements or a declaration from the owner, is what stops an item being taken, and knowing which items in your home are on hire purchase matters if an attachment has been threatened. The wider guide to what enforcement agents can take covers the equivalent rules in England and Wales, which differ in detail.

Time to pay orders: up to £25,000, repaid over about two years

A time to pay order is the main legal brake on diligence, and the window to get one opens at the charge for payment stage. It allows you to repay the debt by monthly instalments, and while it is in force it prevents creditors from making you bankrupt or using most types of diligence against you⁵. It can cover debts up to £25,000, repaid over about two years.

The application comes at a specific point in the process. Taking council tax as the example, you can apply once the summary warrant has been granted and the council has served a charge for payment and offered you time to pay the debt⁵. Mygov.scot's council tax guidance likewise directs people in arrears to ask about payment agreements, including asking a sheriff officer to make a payment agreement, before enforcement goes further²¹.

The order's protection is real but conditional. A creditor can use diligence if you received a charge for payment and did not apply for time to pay, or if you were granted time to pay but have missed two payments and a third is due⁵. Two missed instalments, in other words, put the order at risk, and the third falling due is the trigger. If your circumstances change while the order is running, the order may be able to be varied, and a debt adviser or the creditor can be contacted before a payment is missed rather than after.

A time to pay order is one of several Scottish options for restructuring a debt, and it sits alongside the Debt Arrangement Scheme, which covers multiple debts over a longer period. The comparison of sequestration and the Debt Arrangement Scheme may help in choosing between the formal solutions, and free debt advice should be part of that decision.

Where a time to pay order does not help

A time to pay order is designed for a single debt, and it does not solve everything. The Accountant in Bankruptcy's guidance on Debt Arrangement Scheme eligibility makes the boundary explicit: an applicant is not eligible for DAS if the single debt is being paid under a time to pay order under the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987²². So a time to pay order and DAS are not things you can stack for the same debt, and someone with multiple debts who puts one under a time to pay order may find it affects what else they can do.

The order also does not reach debts outside its scope, and it does not stop every type of enforcement in every situation: the protection is against most types of diligence and bankruptcy by the creditors covered by the order⁵. Some enforcement routes run on their own track. Revenue Scotland, for example, can apply to the sheriff court for a summary warrant where you have failed to respond to a demand for payment, and can seek recovery through proceedings before the sheriff court or the Court of Session for particular types of case⁶. HMRC's guidance similarly notes that property charging orders do not apply in Scotland, so the enforcement tools used against Scottish homes differ from those in England and Wales.

And the order does not pay the debt. It reschedules it. If the instalments it sets are not affordable from the start, the order is likely to fail at the two missed payments stage⁵, leaving the debtor back at the charge for payment with time gone. Working out what is genuinely affordable, using a budget based on the Common Financial Tool, is what makes a time to pay application hold together.

If you knew nothing about the court case

Many people first learn of a decree when a charge for payment or a sheriff officer arrives, because the court action was raised at an address they had left, or was never received. Scottish law recognises this. In certain circumstances, you may be able to apply to the court to have the decree or decision of the sheriff recalled, for example if you had no knowledge of the case²³.

Recall is not an appeal against the debt itself. It is a request to the court to undo a decision that was made without you, and it depends on the circumstances: no knowledge of the case is the example the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service gives. If recall is granted, the position returns broadly to where it was before the decree, which may mean the creditor has to prove the claim against a defence.

The practical steps are time-sensitive. The sooner the application is made after discovering the decree, the better the prospects, and a solicitor or debt adviser can assess whether the grounds exist. If the decree stands, the routes back to control are the ones on this page: a time to pay application where one is still possible, a payment arrangement with the creditor, or a formal debt solution. The guides on county court judgments and how long you have to reply to a court claim cover the equivalent English and Welsh process.

Complaining about a sheriff officer

You can complain if a sheriff officer treats you in an unfair way¹. You cannot complain about the outcome of your case or the handling of your case: those are matters for the court, not for a complaint about the officer's conduct¹. So rudeness, threats, misrepresentation of powers, entry in breach of the rules above, or taking goods that were protected are complaint matters; losing the case is not.

A complaint about conduct goes first to the firm of sheriff officers concerned, and if unresolved, onwards. The officer's conduct is also tied to their appointment as an officer of court, and the Scottish Government now collects quarterly statistical data from sheriff officers on the use of arrestment under section 84 of the 1987 Act, which adds a layer of oversight to the system¹⁶.

Two related points are worth knowing. First, if the real grievance is that the debt should never have been enforced, the remedy is recall of the decree, not a complaint²³. Second, if the person at the door was not a genuine sheriff officer at all, that is a scam, and it can be reported: Police Scotland handles fraud and scam reports, and Citizens Advice Scotland operates a Scam Checker you can use to test whether something might be a scam²⁴. The scams and fraud guide covers the wider warning signs.

Free debt advice in Scotland

Everything on this page happens late in the life of a debt, and most of it can be avoided by getting advice earlier. The Scottish Government supports organisations to give free debt advice²⁵, and whoever you ask for money or debt advice, it matters that the person you speak to knows you live in Scotland, because the rules here differ from the rest of the UK⁷.

Free advice matters at the enforcement stage as well as before it. A moratorium on diligence under the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016 pauses most enforcement while advice is sought⁸, and the Debt Advice and Information Package that creditors must provide in certain enforcement situations exists to point people towards that advice⁷. An adviser can check whether a charge for payment was properly served, whether a time to pay application is still open, whether the deduction tables are being applied correctly, and whether a formal solution such as a debt payment programme under DAS, a protected trust deed or sequestration fits the situation better than letting diligence run.

The starting points are set out in the guide to free debt advice, and the debt section explains every solution and your rights alongside them.