Breathing Space and Bailiffs: What the 60-Day Protection Stops

That is a genuinely strong protection, and it is free. But it has real limits, and the limits are exactly where most pages become vague. This guide sets out both, with the regulation behind each point.

The scheme's formal name is the Debt Respite Scheme, created by the Debt Respite Scheme (Breathing Space Moratorium and Mental Health Crisis Moratorium) (England and Wales) Regulations 2020.

Does Breathing Space stop bailiffs?

Yes, for the debts inside it, and the rules bind the enforcement agent directly rather than only the creditor.

Regulation 12(4) provides that during a moratorium an enforcement agent who is notified of it, or is otherwise aware of it, must not:

• give you a Notice of Enforcement under paragraph 7 of Schedule 12
• visit your home or business for the purpose of taking control of goods
• take control of goods
• sell your goods, unless they took possession before the moratorium started
• require you to pay fees, penalties or charges accruing during the moratorium relating to storage of goods seized beforehand

The phrase "or is otherwise aware" matters. An agent who knows a moratorium is in place cannot rely on not having received formal notification.

Separately, regulation 7(6) prevents the creditor from requiring interest, requiring fees or charges that accrue during the moratorium, taking enforcement action, or instructing an agent to do any of those things. Regulation 7(7) spells out what counts as enforcement action, and it expressly includes obtaining a warrant and selling or taking control of goods.

There is one further protection worth knowing. Under regulation 7(3), a court may not give a creditor permission to charge interest or to add fees during the moratorium. Those two prohibitions are absolute. A court can be asked to permit some other enforcement steps, but not those.

The two types of Breathing Space

They are different in length, in who applies, and in who qualifies.

Under regulation 26(2), a standard moratorium continues for 60 days beginning with the date it started, unless cancelled. It starts the day after the entry is made on the register, so the protection is not instantaneous at the moment you speak to an adviser.

Under regulation 32(2), a mental health crisis moratorium ends on the earliest of several events, the main one being 30 days beginning with the day the debtor stops receiving mental health crisis treatment. There is no 60-day cap. If crisis treatment lasts four months, the protection lasts four months and then a further 30 days.

Which debts are protected

Regulation 5(1) defines a qualifying debt broadly: any debt or liability other than a defined list of non-eligible debt. Regulation 5(3) then confirms that qualifying debts include amounts payable under a court judgment, under an order or warrant for possession, under a controlled goods agreement, and any debt owed to the Crown.

For bailiff readers that resolves the questions that matter most:

• Council tax arrears qualify, which usually means a liability order is already in place
• Parking fines and penalty charge notices issued by a council qualify, being civil debts
• A debt under a County Court Judgment qualifies
• A debt under an existing controlled goods agreement qualifies
• Debts to HMRC and the DWP qualify, as debts owed to the Crown

That list does not create an exception to the exclusions below. Regulation 5(3) confirms these categories count as debts in the first place; it does not override regulation 5(4). A social fund crisis loan is a DWP debt but is listed separately as excluded, and a fine imposed by a court for an offence does not become a qualifying debt merely because it happens to be secured by a controlled goods agreement.

Which debts are excluded

Regulation 5(4) lists non-eligible debt. The exclusions that catch people out are:

• Court fines imposed for an offence. This is the big one. A magistrates' court fine, including one for TV licence evasion or a criminal conviction, is not protected. If a bailiff is enforcing a court fine, Breathing Space does not stop them.
• Child maintenance and family court obligations, including maintenance calculations under the Child Support Act 1991
• Student loans
• Social fund crisis loans and budgeting loans
• Debts incurred through the debtor's fraud or fraudulent breach of trust
• Confiscation orders under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and its predecessors
• Secured debt that is not in arrears, your ongoing mortgage is not swept in, though mortgage arrears can qualify
• Damages for personal injury or death arising from negligence or breach of duty

The distinction between a court fine and a council-issued penalty is the one to get right. A parking penalty charge notice from a council is a civil debt and qualifies. A fine imposed by a magistrates' court after a conviction does not.

What if bailiffs have already taken your goods?

This is where the honest answer differs from the reassuring one, and where most pages go quiet.

Regulation 12(4)(d) prohibits an enforcement agent from selling your goods "unless the enforcement agent took possession of the goods prior to the start of the moratorium".

So if goods were already removed before the moratorium began, Breathing Space does not prevent their sale. The protection is not retrospective on that point.

What it does do is stop new action, and it stops the meter running. Under regulation 12(4)(e) the agent cannot require you to pay storage fees that accrue during the moratorium, and under regulation 12(5) they cannot come back for those fees after the moratorium ends either. Charges that accrued during the protected period are gone, not deferred.

If goods have been removed, that is a reason to act within hours rather than days, and to raise any exemption or third-party ownership claim immediately rather than waiting for the moratorium to do work it cannot do. See what bailiffs can take.

Goods under a controlled goods agreement

If you have signed a controlled goods agreement, the debt under it is a qualifying debt, so the moratorium applies to it.

During the moratorium the agent cannot take control of goods, cannot visit to do so, and cannot sell goods they did not already have in their possession. Goods listed on a controlled goods agreement that remain in your home have not been taken into the agent's possession in that sense, so they are protected from sale during the moratorium.

Keep the listed goods available and do not dispose of them. The moratorium pauses enforcement; it does not release the goods from control, and the agreement does not disappear.

Fees, interest and charges

Under regulation 7(6)(a) and (b), a creditor cannot require you to pay interest, fees, penalties or charges that accrue during the moratorium period. Under regulation 7(3) a court cannot authorise those steps at all.

Two points people misread:

Fees already properly incurred before the moratorium do not vanish. If a compliance fee of £79 and an enforcement fee of £247 were correctly added before the protection started, they remain part of the balance.

Storage fees are treated more generously. Regulation 12(4)(e) and 12(5) together mean storage charges accruing during the moratorium cannot be demanded, either during it or after it ends.

Breathing Space is free

Regulation 4(1) is short and worth quoting in full: *"A debt advice provider must not charge a debtor a fee in connection with a moratorium."*

If anybody offers to arrange Breathing Space for a fee, that is not how the scheme works. It is accessed through FCA-authorised debt advice providers at no cost.

Who is eligible

Regulation 24(3) sets the criteria. On the date of the application you must be an individual, you must owe a qualifying debt, and you must be domiciled or ordinarily resident in England or Wales. Breathing Space does not cover Scotland, which has its own statutory moratorium, or Northern Ireland; in practice, readers in either country can see our guide to enforcement in Scotland and Northern Ireland for how each system works instead.

You are not eligible if you are currently subject to:

• a debt relief order
• an interim order or an individual voluntary arrangement
• undischarged bankruptcy
• another breathing space moratorium, or one that ended less than 12 months ago
• a mental health crisis moratorium

The adviser must also be satisfied, under regulation 24(4), that you cannot or are unlikely to be able to repay your debts, and that a moratorium is appropriate.

That last condition is why Breathing Space is not simply available on request. It is a step towards a debt solution, and the adviser has to form a view that it will serve that purpose.

How you get Breathing Space

You cannot apply directly to the government or to a court. Access is through a debt advice provider.

1. Contact an authorised debt adviser. Say clearly that enforcement agents are involved and give any deadline you are facing.
2. The adviser assesses eligibility. They must be satisfied that you cannot, or are unlikely to be able to, repay your debts, and that a moratorium is appropriate.
3. List every debt. Only debts notified into the scheme are protected. A debt the adviser does not know about carries on being enforced.
4. The entry goes on the register, and creditors and their agents are notified.
5. Protection starts the day after the register entry, and runs for 60 days.
6. Use the time to put a solution in place.

Tell the adviser about every enforcement agent and give the reference number from any Notice of Enforcement you have. Missing one debt off the list is the most common way people end up protected on paper and still visited in practice.

The midway review

Under regulation 27, the debt advice provider must carry out a midway review, and the timing is fixed: it must not be done within the first 25 days, and must be completed before the end of 35 days from the start.

The adviser must cancel the moratorium at that review if you have not complied with your obligations, if a debt solution is already in place for all the debts, or if they cannot consult you, unless your personal circumstances would make cancellation unfair or unreasonable, or, where the missed obligation was paying an ongoing liability, you did not have the financial means to pay it. In either of those cases the adviser may keep the moratorium running despite the missed obligation.

The practical implication is simple: stay contactable. A moratorium cancelled at day 30 because the adviser could not reach you leaves you unprotected for the remaining month.

What you must still do during Breathing Space

The moratorium protects you from enforcement on the listed debts. It does not suspend your ongoing bills.

You must keep paying ongoing liabilities as they fall due, current rent or mortgage, current council tax, current utility bills, and current insurance. These are not moratorium debts; they are the cost of continuing to live in the property.

Failing to keep ongoing liabilities current is a ground on which the moratorium can be cancelled at the midway review, and it also builds a second set of arrears behind the first.

Your obligations during the moratorium

Breathing Space is not unconditional. Regulation 16(2) sets out four duties, and breaching them is a ground for cancellation at the midway review.

You must tell your adviser about any material change in your circumstances or financial position.

You must pay your ongoing liabilities as they fall due during the moratorium.

You must not obtain additional credit exceeding £500 at any one point in time, alone or jointly with anybody else. Regulation 16(3) is explicit that this includes goods bailed to you under a hire-purchase agreement or agreed to be sold under a conditional sale agreement. Taking a car on finance during your Breathing Space is obtaining credit, whatever the dealer calls it.

You must engage with your debt adviser in the way they consider appropriate.

There is also a duty at the application stage, under regulation 16(1): take reasonable care to give accurate information, and do not deliberately withhold relevant information. Understating your income to secure a moratorium puts the whole protection at risk.

If another bailiff debt appears during the moratorium

It can still be brought in. Under regulation 15, where the adviser becomes aware of a debt that was not on the original list, they must consider whether it is a qualifying debt, and if it is, provide the details so the moratorium applies to it.

There is a timing rule that matters. Within the first 45 days the adviser must notify a qualifying additional debt. After 45 days, the adviser may do so if they consider it appropriate, it becomes discretionary rather than mandatory.

So a Notice of Enforcement that lands in week two is straightforwardly added. One that arrives in week eight depends on the adviser's judgement. Tell them the moment anything new arrives rather than waiting for the next scheduled contact.

Does it apply in your case?

Run through this before contacting an adviser, because it decides whether Breathing Space is the right tool at all.

Is the debt a qualifying debt? Council tax, parking penalties, County Court judgments, rent arrears, energy arrears, and debts to HMRC and the DWP all qualify. Court fines, child maintenance, student loans and the other regulation 5(4) exclusions do not.

Are you eligible? You must be an individual, owe a qualifying debt, and be domiciled or ordinarily resident in England or Wales, and not currently subject to a DRO, IVA, interim order, bankruptcy, another moratorium, or one that ended less than 12 months ago.

Have goods already been removed? If so, Breathing Space will not prevent their sale, and you need faster action than a moratorium provides.

Is the debt affordable with time? If it is, an arrangement may be quicker. Breathing Space is designed as a step towards a debt solution, and the adviser must be satisfied a moratorium is appropriate.

Attachment of earnings and deductions from benefits

These are enforcement steps in respect of the underlying debt, so where the debt is a moratorium debt they fall within the protection, except where the deduction is for a court fine or another non-eligible debt, which the moratorium does not touch.

Regulation 7(7) defines enforcement action broadly, including any step to collect a moratorium debt and any step to enforce a judgment or order issued before or during the moratorium period. A deduction being taken to satisfy a protected debt is exactly that.

The practical problem is notification. A council attachment of earnings order already running with your employer, or a deduction already set up against your benefits, will not stop by itself. Somebody has to know the moratorium exists.

So list these explicitly with your adviser, naming the creditor and the reference, so they are notified into the scheme. Then check your next payslip or benefit statement, and if a deduction is still being taken for a protected debt, raise it in writing straight away with the creditor and your adviser.

Note the distinction for DWP overpayments: those are debts owed to the Crown and therefore qualifying debts, so recovery should pause. Ongoing deductions that relate to something other than a moratorium debt are a different matter.

County Court and High Court enforcement

Both are covered where the underlying debt qualifies, and a judgment debt does.

Regulation 7(7)(d) makes it enforcement action to obtain a warrant, so no new warrant of control should be issued during the moratorium. Regulation 12(4) then binds the enforcement agent directly: no Notice of Enforcement, no visit to take control of goods, no taking control of goods.

High Court enforcement officers fall within the definition of enforcement agent used in the regulations, which covers an individual authorised under section 63(2) of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 or an individual authorised under paragraph 2(1) of Schedule 7 to the Courts Act 2003. So a writ of control is not outside the scheme.

If an agent instructed under a warrant or writ contacts you after the moratorium has started, tell them in writing, give the moratorium reference, and copy your debt adviser.

Parking penalties and traffic debts

Council-issued penalty charge notices are civil debts, so they qualify and enforcement of them pauses. See our guide to council tax bailiffs where the debt is council tax, and the Traffic Enforcement Centre where it is a traffic penalty.

Two things Breathing Space does not do here. It does not cancel the penalty, and it does not extend the deadlines in the separate statutory challenge route. If you have grounds to challenge a penalty registered at the Traffic Enforcement Centre, the statutory declaration route on form PE3, or PE2 to file out of time, runs on its own timetable and should be pursued alongside the moratorium rather than after it.

What Breathing Space does not do

It is worth being clear about the boundaries, because expecting the wrong thing from it wastes the 60 days.

It does not write off any debt. The balances survive the moratorium intact, minus any interest and charges that were prohibited during it.

It does not stop court fines, child maintenance, student loans or the other non-eligible debts in regulation 5(4).

It does not undo enforcement that has already happened. Goods already in the agent's possession can still be sold, and fees properly incurred beforehand remain payable.

It does not pause your ongoing bills, which you must keep paying.

And it is not a debt solution. It is a protected period in which to arrange one.

When Breathing Space ends

Protection stops. Creditors and enforcement agents may restart action on the debts, and interest and charges may begin to accrue again from that point forward.

What cannot happen is back-dating: interest and fees that were prohibited during the moratorium do not get reinstated retrospectively, and storage charges from the protected period cannot be revived.

Breathing Space is therefore a window, not a solution. The 60 days are for putting something durable in place, an affordable arrangement, a debt relief order, an IVA, bankruptcy, or a successful challenge to the debt itself. Reaching day 60 with nothing arranged puts you back where you started, with two months less time.

Joint debts, and why joint debtors are protected too

This is a point many pages get wrong, and it is worth being precise about.

Regulation 7(7)(n) closes the obvious loophole: it is enforcement action for a creditor or agent to take any of the prohibited steps "in relation to a joint debtor".

So where a debt is jointly held and one person obtains a moratorium, the creditor cannot simply redirect enforcement of that same moratorium debt at the other joint debtor. The debt is protected, not merely the individual who applied.

Two limits on that. It protects the moratorium debt, so a separate debt in the other person's sole name is untouched. And a guarantor whose liability arises solely from a guarantee or indemnity, with no other liability, is treated differently under the regulations' definition of a joint debtor.

If you are jointly liable with a partner or former partner, or somebody has guaranteed the debt, tell the adviser at the outset so the position is recorded correctly.

Contact, committal and eviction

Regulation 7(7) lists the steps that count as enforcement action, and three of them are commonly overlooked.

Contacting you to enforce. Under regulation 7(7)(l), it is enforcement action to *"contact a debtor for the purpose of enforcement of a moratorium debt"*. Chasing letters, calls and texts pursuing payment of a protected debt should stop. Some other communication remains permissible, a creditor may still be required to send statutory notices under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 or FCA rules, so not every letter is a breach.

Committal to prison. Under regulation 7(7)(m), it is enforcement action to make an application for commitment to prison under regulation 47 of the Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992, or the equivalent business-rates provision. If a council has been moving towards a committal hearing on council tax arrears, a moratorium pauses that application.

Two things are worth knowing about that underlying power, because it is frequently overstated. Regulation 47 applies to billing authorities in England, the Welsh provisions were amended in 2019 and imprisonment for council tax no longer applies there. And the threshold is not simply non-payment: the court may issue a warrant of commitment only "if (and only if) the court is of the opinion that his failure is due to his wilful refusal or culpable neglect", and only after enforcement agents have reported being unable to find sufficient goods. Any term is capped at three months.

Eviction on rent arrears grounds. Under regulation 7(7)(j) and (k), it is enforcement action to serve a notice seeking possession, or to take possession having served one, on grounds 8, 10 or 11 of Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1988, the rent arrears grounds, with equivalent provision for Wales under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016. Possession law is time-critical and fact-sensitive, so take specific advice rather than relying on the moratorium alone.

Utilities: meters and disconnection

Regulation 7(7)(h) and (i) protect the supply itself.

During a moratorium a creditor may not take steps to install a prepayment meter to recover a moratorium debt, or use one already installed to take such payments, unless you had consented to the installation before the moratorium started.

Nor may they disconnect your gas or electricity supply in respect of a moratorium debt, unless the supply was taken illegally.

Energy arrears are qualifying debts, so if a supplier has been threatening a meter installation or disconnection over arrears, that is a debt to notify into the scheme.

Breathing Space and other enforcement

County Court warrants of control and High Court writs. These enforce judgment debts, which are qualifying debts, so the moratorium applies. Regulation 7(7)(d) expressly prevents obtaining a warrant during the moratorium.

Eviction and possession. Amounts payable under an order or warrant for possession are qualifying debts under regulation 5(3)(a)(i), so rent arrears within the moratorium are protected. Possession proceedings are complex and time-critical, and this is a point to take specific advice on rather than to assume.

Attachment of earnings and benefit deductions. These are enforcement steps in respect of the underlying debt. Raise them explicitly with the adviser so they are notified into the scheme along with everything else.

Court fines. Not protected, as above.

What to do now

If a bailiff visit is imminent, contact a debt adviser today and tell them the timescale. Protection begins the day after registration, so a day's delay is a real day of exposure.

If you have a Notice of Enforcement, have the reference and the enforcement agent's details ready for the adviser.

If goods have already been removed, act immediately, because the moratorium will not prevent their sale.

If the debt is a court fine, Breathing Space is not the route, and you should look at the separate options for fine enforcement.

If you are in mental health crisis treatment, tell the treatment team, a mental health crisis moratorium is applied for by an approved mental health professional or another nominated point of contact, not by you, and it lasts longer.