North Ayrshire Council has welcomed the ‘certainty’ that Alex Salmond’s pledge to ban the recovery of historic Poll Tax debt brings - despite the fact that it means it will no longer be able to recoup £12.5 million in arrears. The First Minister last week announced that new rules would be brought in to prevent council collecting historical poll tax arrears.

This followed claims that councils would be able to use the details of people registering to vote in the referendum to pursue outstanding payments.

However, former Ayrshire Council leader and current president of local government organisation COSLA, Councillor David O’Neill, has called the move “obscene” and says it flies in the face of government policy on the recovery of debt.

Mr Salmond, who will step down in November, told the Scottish Parliament: “I can announce that it is the government’s intention to bring forward legislation to ensure that councils can take no further action to recover ancient poll tax debts.

“After 25 years it’s about time the poll tax is finally dead and buried in Scotland.” When asked for the its view of the announcement, a spokesperson for North Ayrshire Council said: “The council welcomes the legal certainty which the announcement brings.” Outstanding poll tax accounts for around £12.5m of the council’s debt. However, it has not affected the council’s accounts in recent years having been written off more than a decade ago. Debtors continued to be liable for payments since then.

The spokesperson said: “Writing-off of debts likely to be irrecoverable is a normal accounting procedure. It does not remove a debtor’s liability to make payment. Like all other debts of the council which are written off, the council can still receive outstanding poll tax arrears.” Councillor O’Neill argued that councils have an ‘obligation’ to collect all outstanding debt and said that the Scottish Government had indicated that councils should not seek any additional funding if they were not pursuing these debts.

He said: “At the moment, the Scottish government have no idea how many councils are making part or total use of the expanded electoral register, they don’t know how many individuals in the community would be affected by this, they don’t know whether these people now have the resources to pay the debt and they don’t know how much additional resource this might provide local government with.

“Despite all that, they are rushing with obscene haste to new legislation.”