Acknowledgements

First of all, many thanks to the Scottish government for providing the funds to enable this new Scottish resource to be published free online.

This Handbook is based on the Debt Advice Handbook which has been the standard text for debt advice in England and Wales for over 30 years. The authors of that book, most notably Mike Wolfe and Peter Madge, are gratefully acknowledged.

We are very grateful to Kim Banks, Carole Benzie, Kelly Gallagher, Natalia Mallon, Joe McMonagle, Tony Pearson and Christine Sinclair for checking and providing an adviser-level view of the text. Thanks also to Robyn Moffat-Wall for her advice on the economic abuse chapter and to Ian Horne from the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service for his advice on the court fines chapter. Special thanks to John Cook and the individual teams at the Accountant in Bankruptcy for reviewing Chapter 6.

Last but not least, thanks to the team at CPAG and to Katherine Dawson for producing the index and Kathleen Armstong for proofreading the text.

This book is dedicated to all the hard-working debt advisers in Scotland.

The law covered in this book was correct on and includes regulations laid up to 1 June 2024.