Annual Report and Accounts 2024-25

This year ended with the 10th Anniversary of the 2014 Bankruptcy and Diligence (Scotland) Act coming into force on 1 April 2015, a set of major reforms that were intended to make our statutory debt solutions fit for the 21st century. Even if the 2024 Act was far smaller, it is just one example of how change has never stopped, and the Agency has continued to rise to an ever new set of challenges. And the MacDermid Review of the system may well mark the start of another round of fundamental change, even if further primary legislation will need to wait until after the coming Scottish Parliament elections.

Despite the impact on families and individuals of Brexit, the pandemic and the cost crisis, we continue to see levels of take-up of the statutory debt solutions that - when compared with the 15 years pre-pandemic – look markedly low. And we have no compelling reason to think this will change in the coming year. All of which makes this a good time for the Agency to get its house in order for when higher volumes inevitably return.

The following pages show we have made good progress in that. Alongside our excellent performance against the key performance indicators that assess our delivery of our core functions, we have:

• successfully implemented our part in the Scottish Government’s flexible working pilot
• made strong progress on moving our IT into the cloud
• significantly reduced our environmental impact with our building’s environmental rating moving from an “F” to an “A”
• agreed and freed up space for 70 staff from other public bodies to move into our building
• moved onto new finance and human resources systems provided by the Scottish Government
• made the first steps into turning some of our publications into video guides for those who find this form of communication more effective, hosted on our new website

Cyber-attack remains our number one risk, and one of our computer servers was penetrated in the run up to Christmas. This led to us having to remove online access to the Register of Insolvencies for a period of six working days – with a manual-handling replacement service put in place by the third day. Whilst we were to some extent fortunate that the damage was limited, the response from the team here was exemplary in minimising the impact on our stakeholders.

None of this would have been possible without the hard work and commitment of our team, and I am glad once again to have the opportunity to publicly thank them for their continued commitment to public service.

Dr. Richard Dennis

The Accountant in Bankruptcy and Agency Chief Executive