The Scottish Executive has rejected calls from its own advisers to give local authorities an amnesty on tackling council tax arrears.

In a report published last week commissioned by the Executive, researchers from Heriot-Watt University called for councils to be able to write-off older arrears. But a spokesman for the Executive said there would be no amnesty and ministers would respond to the report in due course. She added the report was commissioned to find ways of improving council tax collection rates, and local authorities were under a legal obligation to collect ‘every single penny'.