Debt Arrangement Scheme (DAS) arrangements: FOI release

Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.


Information requested

You asked for the following information:

  1. How many DAS arrangements have been set up each year since the inception of the scheme.
  2. How many other arrangements (trust deeds etc) have been set up in Scotland over the same period. 
  3. The geographical spread by council area of DAS schemes.
  4. The number of accredited money advisers for DAS by local council area in Scotland.
  5. The current level of debt by local council area (i.e. the levels of reported debt reported by people coming forward seeking debt solutions from councils and other agencies such as CAB Scotland).

Response

I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested, detailed below and attached in the Excel spreadsheet format you asked for. Note that nearly all the information requested is available on the AiB website. Hence, under section 25(1) of FOISA we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. Further details are provided below.  

1. How many DAS arrangements have been set up each year since the inception of the scheme. 

Data on the number of approved Debt Payment Programmes under the Debt Arrangement Scheme is available on this AiB website (Detailed table D1): https://www.aib.gov.uk/scottish-quarterly-insolvency-statistics-publication-2018-19-q4-tables

2. How many other arrangements (trust deeds etc) have been set up in Scotland over the same period.

Data on the number of awards of bankruptcy and protected trust deeds is also available on this AiB website (Detailed table D1): https://www.aib.gov.uk/scottish-quarterly-insolvency-statistics-publication-2018-19-q4-tables

3. The geographical spread by council area of DAS schemes.

Data on number of approved Debt Payment Programmes under the Debt Arrangement Scheme by Local Authority Area is available on this AiB website (table 4): https://www.aib.gov.uk/statutory-debt-solutions-scotland-local-authority-2017-18

Also, the latest map (for the financial year 2017-18) on the number of approved Debt Payment Programmes under the Debt Arrangement Scheme by Local Authority is published in the annual report (page 114): https://www.aib.gov.uk/sites/default/files/annual_report_2017-18_0.pdf

Please note the data and map for the financial year 2018-19 will be available in August 2019.

4. The number of accredited money advisers for DAS by local council area in Scotland. 

The number of approved (free-to-client) organisations by local authority area is shown in the following table. Caution is needed when comparing figures across different local authority areas as a few organisations do provide money advice on a national scale. 

Also, AiB does only hold the list of approved money advisers within each organisation, whose DAS system account is active as at June 2019. Again, caution is needed when interpreting the number of individual advisers per organisation as there may be other advisers in an organisation, but whose access to their DAS account has expired due to inactivity in the last six months.

Table 1: Number of approved organisations for Debt Payment Programmes under Debt Arrangement Scheme as at June 2019(1*)

Local Authority Area Number of organisations Number of individual advisers (2*)
Glasgow City 15 36
Highland 7 7
North Lanarkshire 6 19
Aberdeen City 4 9
Aberdeenshire 4 6
City of Edinburgh 4 12
South Lanarkshire 4 20
Argyll and Bute 3 2
Dundee City 3 8
North Ayrshire 3 3
Angus 2 1
Clackmannanshire 2 0
Dumfries and Galloway 2 4
East Lothian 2 9
East Renfrewshire 2 5
Falkirk 2 5
Midlothian 2 2
Renfrewshire 2 8
Scottish Borders 2 1
South Ayrshire 2 2
West Dunbartonshire 2 6
West Lothian 2 11
East Ayrshire 1 1
East Dunbartonshire 1 1
Fife 1 18
Inverclyde 1 3
Moray 1 4
Na h-Eileanan Siar 1 1
Orkney Islands 1 0
Perth and Kinross 1 3
Shetland Islands 1 0
Stirling 1 6
Outside Scotland 2 4
Total 89 217

(1*) By organisations, we refer to free-to-client organisations registered as offering DAS as a debt solution to their clients. Also, although a few organisations such as StepChange and Shelter etc. are allocated to the relevant local authority area according to their postcode, they do provide money advice on a national scale.

(2*) This is based on those advisers with an active DAS log-in account. The caveat is that there may be other advisers in the organisation, but whose DAS account has expired due to inactivity.

5. The current level of debt by local council area (i.e. the levels of reported debt reported by people coming forward seeking debt solutions from councils and other agencies such as CAB Scotland).

AiB does not hold information on the current level of debt reported by people coming forward seeking debt solutions broken down by the councils, advice agencies or CAB offices involved. This is a notice under section 17 of FOISA that the information you have requested is not held. We only hold data on those who have accessed any one of the statutory debt solutions in Scotland.

StepChange published their annual report called “Scotland in the Red” as a way to get a picture of how their clients were affected in 2018. They also produced data on problem debt by Scottish Parliament Constituency and Region separately: https://www.stepchange.org/policy-and-research/2018-scotland-in-the-red.aspx

About FOI
The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

Contact

Please quote the FOI reference
Central Enquiry Unit
Email: ceu@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000

The Scottish Government
St Andrews House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG

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