THE Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) in Inverness is seeing an increasing number of people who are in debt. In this article Pam Fargie, the Money Advice Worker at the CAB gives some good advice if you are one of these.

“If you are having problems in repaying money you owe, then getting help at the earliest possible stage is the best way of solving your problem. The longer you leave it the more difficult it becomes and the more drastic the actions that can be taken against you,” says Pam.

She explains that the CAB will help you deal with your debts by first of all agreeing your regular essential expenditure. This is the money you need to spend on things like rent, food, fuel, clothes, Social Fund Loans, court fines, etc.
Then, if there is anything left, she will work out how this can be divided between your creditors. CAB is usually successful at securing a creditor’s agreements to a payment plan, but Pam again stresses that the sooner you take action, the more likely the creditor is to co-operate.
If things have got beyond this stage, your creditor is likely to take court action against you. Unless this is done, neither the creditor nor anyone acting as his agent, has the legal right to enter your home, take away items, sell household or personal goods, or arrest wages or bank accounts.

However, once a decree and a charge for payment (two separate actions - a decree on its own is not sufficient), then the creditor can engage the services of Sheriff Officers, who are officially appointed Officers of the Court, to serve the charge on you.
There are strict rules for this, which the Sheriff Officers must follow - if in doubt, get advice from CAB.

Note! The rules are different for Council Tax, Community Charge and Income Tax. These are recoverable through an accelerated process called Summary Warrant. If you have arrears in any of these areas, get advice right away!

The process of recovering debt in Scotland is called diligence and the most common usages of diligence are either Poinding (pronounced “pinding”), Wage and/or Bank Arrestment.
If you are working or have savings or a bank account, then creditors are likely to use a Wages or Bank Arrestment to recover the money they are owed.
Otherwise they may try to recover the debt by selling some of your property in a Warrant Sale.
Before they can do this, the Sheriff Officer would visit your home and carry out a poinding; this involves identifying items of household goods, which if sold will pay off, or go some way to pay off, the money owed.

Again, there are strict rules about this procedure, not least about the items that can be poinded and those which can’t.

If you are faced with a Poinding, or have had one carried out, get advice! At this stage it is still possible to resolve the problem but don’t hang about!

Finally Pam says, “The Scottish Parliament is abolishing poindings and warrant sales, but this is unlikely to happen before the end of next year. Till then, warrant sales can still take place.”