Messengers-at-Arms and Sheriff Officers
By long tradition, the services of messengers-at-arms and sheriff officers, as public officers, are immediately available to all the sovereign’s lieges – as the general public, thus including all court users, has been termed. This means that private individuals, as well as law firms, commercial companies, and departments of government, can instruct us directly.
Please follow the links under ‘Services’ for information about our main areas of our work.
The laws of citation and diligence describe our principal professional province. We practise throughout Scotland, and also welcome instructions to arrange for the execution of Scottish warrants abroad.
In particular, if you are a credit union, or a landlord of commercial premises in Scotland with a registered lease, or a creditor with a judgment granted in a court in another part of the UK than Scotland, and your debtor is in Scotland, there is helpful information here.
PRACTICAL POINTS
As messengers-at-arms, we are authorised to execute citation and diligence in all parts of Scotland.
As sheriff officers, our commissions extend to these sheriffdoms:
- Glasgow and Strathkelvin
- North Strathclyde
- South Strathclyde, Dumfries and Galloway
- Lothian and Borders
However, we welcome instructions to serve documents in all parts of Scotland, on the basis that we may choose to forward your instruction to a more local officer, holding a necessary commission. This involves no extra cost in the service – indeed, it means that the extra costs that are involved if a messenger-at-arms travels 30 and more miles from his place of business can usually be avoided.
Our fees are charged in accordance with the table of fees payable to messengers-at-arms, or the table of fees payable to sheriff officers, depending upon the court involved. You can see the relevant Scottish statutory instrument here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/2021/225/made
Additional costs apply for service outwith business hours, in remote rural locations, and (in the case of service by messenger-at-arms) in travelling to places more than 30 miles from our office. For documents coming from courts in other parts of the UK, for service by delivery at addresses in Scotland, we act either as messengers-at-arms or as sheriff officers, by this distinction: if the documents are issued by a supreme court, we act as messengers-at-arms; if issued by a district or county court, we serve as sheriff officers.
In all cases in which diligence is used in execution – that is, after a decree has been granted, or a judgment from another jurisdiction, or a document of debt has been registered – you, as the instructing party, are liable to pay our fee. By virtue of Sections 93 and 94 of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987, certain expenses chargeable against the debtor may then be recoverable from the debtor’s first payments to account. Therefore, in those cases where money is successfully recovered, what we hope ultimately to provide is a legal service which proves free of cost to you, the user.
To discuss the relevant costs involved in your own case, before spending anything, please feel free to contact us.
