Zack Polanski cleared by ethics inquiry over council tax payment complaint

Zack Polanski has been cleared by an ethics inquiry looking into complaints that he did not pay council tax while living on a houseboat. A report by the Greater London authority’s monitoring officer found that the circumstances of the Green party leader’s living arrangements were beyond its scope and he had therefore not breached the code of conduct for London assembly members. The complaints from Labour and the Conservatives alleged that Polanski had breached the requirements of the ethics code because he had not paid council tax while living on a houseboat in east London from 2022. Polanski, who previously apologised for the “unintentional mistake”, revealed in his evidence to the monitoring officer that it had still not been established whether any tax was due and that the site of the boat fell on the border of two local authorities. As part of the inquiry, he told the monitoring officer that he had “personal experience of financial hardship and housing insecurity”. He previously said he had not been living at the marina full-time but at another address as a lodger, before it emerged that he had occupied the boat for a couple of years before moving to a house. In his witness statement, Polanski he said he had never had any intention to “evade council tax, avoid legal obligations or obtain any improper financial advantage” and it remained unclear whether he had actually failed to pay the proper tax. …