Green Party leader faces questions over council tax on London houseboat

Zack Polanski is facing new questions about whether he underpaid council tax on a London houseboat where he stayed, as scrutiny of the Green Party leader's background increases. Polanski, who has established the Greens as a serious leftwing threat to Sir Keir Starmer's Labour, has already apologised for misrepresenting himself as a British Red Cross spokesperson. The tax issue relates to a houseboat in a marina in Hackney, the borough where the Greens took control of the council in last week's elections. The Times newspaper found evidence that the houseboat was Polanski's primary residence, citing an advert for the boat, in which his partner wrote: "We are moving to a house and so will sadly be leaving the gorgeous community behind." Polanski's spokesperson told the Times he rented a room as a lodger at another property and only stayed on the boat "occasionally", although they also confirmed that he had used a building next to the marina, where he was registered to vote, "as a convenient and secure place to collect his post". Tax expert Dan Neidle said in a blog post on Monday that the evidence "suggests to us that the boat was Mr Polanski's main residence". "If, as seems likely, that was his main residence, then Mr Polanski and his partner should have paid council tax there -- but they didn't. Mr Polanski's team says he only stayed at the boat "occasionally" -- but if that's true, then registering to vote at the bungalow may have been a criminal offence." A spokesperson for the Greens said: "Zack's council tax is included in the rent he pays his landlord. We don't comment on Zack's residential arrangements for security reasons." Polanski was elected as leader of the Green Party in England and Wales in September. He has faced criticism in recent days for his response to a terror attack on Jewish people in Golders Green, north London, and his popularity has dropped sharply in opinion polls. Nonetheless, the Greens finished second in last week's local elections on a national vote share basis, according to BBC estimates. On Sunday, the Daily Telegraph reported that Polanski had once described himself as "working at the Ministry of Justice on their training & diversity programmes". The department said it had no record of him working there. A Green Party spokesperson said Polanski had been hired by a third-party agency called Kreate, which describes itself as an "experiential activation and event staffing agency" and provides actors for role-playing scenarios to the Judicial Appointments Commission, a non-departmental government body. "Zack worked inside the Ministry of Justice as an actor role-playing on the Judicial Appointments Commission. He was based inside Clive House and Petty France, both in the MoJ. This is a pattern of the Telegraph scraping the barrel once again," they said.