Why was DAS introduced?
With high levels of debt increasingly hitting the headlines, the Scottish Government (then the Scottish Executive) wanted to do something to help Scots with this problem.
The Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 had already introduced two forms of 'diligence stoppers' (prevention of court action) - time to pay directions and time to pay orders.
However, these were only available from the courts and only applied to single debts and weren't much good to people with multiple debts.
So the Executive decided to introduce a third 'diligence stopper', a scheme whereby those with more than two debts could get help but didn't have to go through the courts. And so the Debt Arrangement Scheme was born.
