The Green Party leader and London Assembly member had been accused of breaching the Greater London Authority’s code of conduct over a tax issue, reports Kumail Jaffer, Local Democracy Reporter
Green Party Leader Zack Polanski has been cleared by the Greater London Authority (GLA) after a complaint about his tax affairs.
Conservative London Assembly member Neil Garratt submitted a formal grievance last month after allegations surfaced that Polanski had failed to pay council tax for a houseboat moored at a marina on the border between Hackney and Waltham Forest boroughs.
He suggested that the Green Party assembly member had breached the Nolan Principles and the GLA code of conduct by failing to pay the council tax during the period of time which he was a London Assembly Member.
However, this morning (Thursday 18th) the GLA monitoring officer concluded that “no further action” needed to be taken.
This is because the complaint “relates to the member’s personal living arrangements” and “does not have a sufficient connection to his role as an assembly member”. Therefore, they said, it falls outside of the scope of the GLA’s code of conduct.
“As a result, the member was not acting in an official capacity as an assembly member and cannot be in breach of the code,” the report said.
“I conclude that the conduct relates to the member’s private circumstances and is not regulated by the code.”
The initial complaint came following news reports that Polanski may have avoided paying council tax despite being registered to vote at the marina address in East London.
“As a London Assembly member, Mr Polanski is responsible for voting to approve or reject the mayor’s budget, and in doing so has the capacity to influence and set the level of council tax that Londoners pay via the mayoral precept,” Garratt wrote in his submission.
“I therefore believe that any conduct which is found to have fallen short of the required standards would also fall within his capacity as an assembly member, given he would have voted to set a tax level which he himself may not have paid.”
In response, lawyers for Polanski said the complaint should be dismissed as the “allegations are unsupported by evidence, are based upon assumptions rather than established facts, and must be viewed in the wider political context in which they have been made”.
In a witness statement, the Green Party leader said the “geographical uncertainty” of the marina basin, which he said falls between both the boroughs of Hackney and Waltham Forest, was partly to blame.
However, he admitted that he did “not undertake further enquiries at the time regarding the specific council tax implications” of his living arrangement, in which he had a leisure mooring agreement and was paying mooring fees. He also accepted that “greater care could have been taken in understanding the practical implications of my unconventional housing arrangements”.
“I believed that any applicable charges associated with the mooring such as council tax were being appropriately managed through the fees I paid,” he added. “I wish to make absolutely clear that there was never any intention on my part to evade council tax, avoid legal obligations, or obtain any improper financial advantage.
“Any failure to appreciate the position arose solely from a misunderstanding of what was required in relation to an unusual and unconventional living arrangement.
“At no stage did I knowingly withhold payment of council tax or deliberately seek to avoid any liability that might lawfully arise.
“A central premise of both complaints is that council tax was owed and that I knowingly failed to pay it. That premise is unsupported by the facts.”
He lambasted the complaints – made by Garratt and Labour Party MP Anna Turley – as “politically motivated and not made in good faith”.
Garratt told the LDRS: “Throughout this entire sad saga, Mr Polanski has avoided consequences the same way he avoided council tax: through happy accidents and gaps in legislation.
“It is beyond parody that a left-wing politician who will take to the stage to demand other people pay their share of taxes, has then gone home and not paid his own or endeavoured to find out what tax he owes.
“But when a politician can have such a cavalier attitude with his CV, or even something as simple as where he lives, it does a disservice to politics. I hope he will reflect on the road that has led him to this point.”
The issue was raised in City Hall on numerous occasions last month, with Labour Assembly Members demanding Mr Polanski explain himself during a session of Mayor’s Question Time.
A spokesperson for Polanski told the LDRS: “The monitoring officer for the Greater London Authority has conducted an independent inquiry into the complaints made against Mr Polanski and decided to take no further action. We therefore consider this matter closed.”
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