Scottish Statutory Debt Solutions Statistics: Annual edition
An experimental statistics publication for Scotland
Debt Arrangement Scheme
The DAS is a statutory debt management solution administered by AiB. Under the DAS, a debtor commits to a DPP which allows them to repay their debts based on their disposable income while they are protected from creditors taking any action against them to recover their debt.
The DAS is a statutory debt management solution administered by AiB. Under the DAS, a debtor commits to a DPP which allows them to repay their debts based on their disposable income while they are protected from creditors taking any action against them to recover their debt.
In 2022-23, there were 4,947 approved DPPs under DAS compared with 4,489 approved in 2021-22, a 10.2% increase.
A DPP reaches completion when the debt in the programme has been paid in full, minus the fees paid to the DAS Administrator and the Payments Distributor. There were 1,918 completed DAS DPPs in 2022-23, a 10.2% increase when compared with 1,740 in 2021-22.
The debt included in live DPPs has increased from £337.0 million to £357.0 million by 31 March 2023. In 2022-23, around £47.0 million was repaid through DAS, a 7.3% increase when compared with £43.8 million repaid in 2021-22. Since the DAS (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2018 came into force on 04 November 2019, creditors receive a minimum of 78% of debt owed to them from debtors on new DPPs approved (after DAS Administrator and payment distributor fees). Prior to this, the minimum was set at 90%. In 2022-23, £39.4 million was repaid to creditors.
Chart 5 below shows the recent trend in approved DPPs under DAS.
Table 8 below shows the high level summary of DAS DPPs since 2018-19 and includes information on the debt level in live DPPs and the amount repaid under DAS.
| Financial year | 2018-19 | 2019-20 | 2020-21 | 2021-22 | 2022-23 | Annual change (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Live cases at the start of the financial year | 12,439 | 12,171 | 12,913 | 14,131 | 15,292 | 8.2% |
| Balancing item to match the published figures for live cases | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 | [z] |
| New DPPs approved | 2,544 | 3,130 | 3,677 | 4,489 | 4,947 | 10.2% |
| of which: Joint applications | 348 | 356 | 311 | 363 | 339 | -6.6% |
| of which: Contains one single debt | 50 | 49 | 31 | 56 | 40 | -28.6% |
| New DPPs completed | 1,687 | 1,622 | 1,812 | 1,740 | 1,918 | 10.2% |
| New DPPs revoked | 1,125 | 766 | 647 | 1,588 | 1,599 | 0.7% |
| Live cases at the end of the financial year | 12,171 | 12,913 | 14,131 | 15,292 | 16,721 | 9.3% |
| Total amount of debts included in live DPPs (£ million) | 268 | 297 | 326 | 337 | 357 | 5.9% |
| Source: Accountant in Bankruptcy |
DPPs by local authority in 2022-23
The rate of DAS DPPs per 10,000 adult population in Scotland was 11 in 2022-23 compared with 10 in 2021-22.
Local Authority Chart 3 and the associated heatmap that depict DAS rates show that North Lanarkshire was the local authority with the highest rate of DPPs per 10,000 adults with the lowest in City of Edinburgh.
Approved DPPs under DAS (and for other statutory debt solutions) by local authority and for previous years are available in the accompanying tables.
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