Welcome to the forum Swimming-under.

This must be a worrying position to find yourself in.

If the debt collection process has reached the stage of seeking a wage arrestment I'm not sure that the collection agency (or the council) will want to rely upon an informal arrangement that you're now prepared to try to make. You can ask them though, there's nothing to be lost by trying.

Do you have other debts as well or do your financial concerns relate to this debt only? How much is owed for council tax?

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Originally posted by Trust Deed Assistant

Welcome to the forum Swimming-under.

This must be a worrying position to find yourself in.

If the debt collection process has reached the stage of seeking a wage arrestment I'm not sure that the collection agency (or the council) will want to rely upon an informal arrangement that you're now prepared to try to make. You can ask them though, there's nothing to be lost by trying.

Do you have other debts as well or do your financial concerns relate to this debt only? How much is owed for council tax?

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Thank you for your reply, i admit, we've had our head in the sand and knew that it would get us eventually but they wanted us to pay too much monthly to stop the arrestment happening. We barely scrape by week-to-week.

This is the only debt, between the 2 of us it's just over £10,000

Once the wage arrangement is in place (assuming that happens) will you still be able to manage your basic living expenses Swimming-under?

I'm guessing from your previous posts that you're worried that this will not be possible.

Hi swimming-under

I think TDA make a good point. Normally the Council will rely on the arrestment once this in place as this will guarantee that the payment is made, although there is no harm in trying to negotiate a payment directly with the Council.

If this is the total debt and you are financially able to survive once the arrestment is deducted, then this will continue until the full payment is made. I'm not sure any of the other solutions would be particularly workable, although this would be dependent on your circumstance, surplus income (if any) etc. DAS or sequestration may be options, although again this would depend on potential surplus etc.

Mark

It might be worth considering the DAS option, depending on what you can afford to offer.

DAS would involve you setting up a payment arrangement via a formal government scheme. You would propose repayments at a rate that you feel you can afford and if it becomes approved then the wage arrestments would be stopped and you would just make the payments proposed through the scheme.

A potential problem with DAS would be that the Council may reject the proposals. If this happens, then the DAS administrator would decide whether the offer is "fair and reasonable" and if they judge it to be so then it could force the council to abide by the decision and cancel the arrestments. In reality, if the council is the only creditor then they are less likely to force the offer on them (though if you can afford something in the region of £170pm plus then there is a chance, as they usually do consider proposals to repay debts within 5 years as fair and reasonable).

Hope this makes sense!