The Bankruptcy and Diligence (Scotland) Act 2024

The Bankruptcy and Diligence (Scotland) Bill was introduced to bring together stakeholder recommendations from stage 2 of the review of statutory debt solutions and the review of diligence, which required to be taken forward through primary legislation.

The Bill was approved by Parliament on 6 June 2024. It received Royal Assent on 15 July 2024 and is now the Bankruptcy and Diligence (Scotland) Act 2024.

It contains provisions that broadly fall into three categories: 

• an enabling power to introduce a mental health moratorium - a new form of moratorium protection for a specific group of debtors, being those who are experiencing serious difficulties with their mental health as well as having problem debt 
• technical amendments to the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016
• diligence measures that modernise existing debt recovery mechanisms and allow for improved processes 

The dates of commencement of each of the provisions are still to be determined.

For more information on the passage of the Bill, please visit the Scottish Parliament website.

The relevant impact assessments are available on the Scottish Government website.