Should Polanski have paid council tax?

It all started with the revelation that the Green Party leader and his partner seem to have stayed on a narrowboat at an east London marina from around 2023 to 2025, according to The Times.

Polanski’s partner also advertised the narrowboat for sale online for £100,000, describing it as the couple’s “amazing home” for the last three years.

Initially, Polanski’s team said he only stayed on the houseboat “occasionally” while living at a rented property in Hackney, where his council tax was baked into the rent.

But the Green Party later said: “Until relatively recently, Zack was living on a houseboat, which came with its own unique practical circumstances and considerations. He has immediately taken steps to pay any council tax he may be found to owe.”

They added: “Zack apologises sincerely for the unintentional mistake.”

A Waltham Forest council spokesperson confirmed that it was “making assessments to establish whether or not there is any council tax owed to Waltham Forest or to any other authority”.

The borough said it was “taking legal advice” and working alongside Polanski’s team to “establish the full picture”.

The revelation that he may have failed to pay council tax is awkward for Polanski, coming after the Greens made major gains in London councils, taking overall control from Labour in Waltham Forest, Lewisham and Hackney.

Polanski has been a member of the London Assembly since May 2021, which is a 25-member elected body within the Greater London Authority (GLA) that scrutinises the Mayor of London’s decisions and budget.

The GLA is funded in part by local council tax, and the current salary for London Assembly members is £66,360. In the 2022 financial year, the base salary was £60,416.

Waltham Forest council added that “whether council tax is owed depends on several complicating factors” because the moorings appear to be in overlapping jurisdictions.

How much could Polanski owe?

Tax expert Dan Niedle, a Labour Party member, said that if the narrowboat was Polanski’s main residence for three years, he and/or his partner should have paid council tax of around £4,000.

Boaters without a permanent mooring – known as continuous cruisers, meaning they have to move every two weeks – are usually exempt from council tax, but those with residential moorings are generally liable to pay.

Waltham Forest council said that a leisure mooring – as appears to be what is permitted at the marina in question – would not ordinarily carry council tax liability. But if Polanski was living there full-time, this could complicate things.

The vast majority of houseboats fall into Band A. If Polanski is liable, he could owe yearly costs of £1,370.37 in 2023/24, £1,449.15 in 2024/25 and £1,518.43 in 2025/26. This comes to a council tax bill of up to £4,337.95.

There is also a fixed £70 penalty if someone fails, without a reasonable excuse, to notify a council of a matter affecting their council tax.

The Green Party did not respond to a request to comment ahead of publication.

Did Polanski break the marina’s rules?

The moorings at the marina for Polanski’s houseboat are meant to be for leisure use only, meaning boaters who live there permanently are breaking the regulations.

The Lee Valley Authority, which oversees the marina, said that all boat owners enter into a “non-residential mooring agreement” and must provide proof of ID and their home address.

Owners may have “short overnight stays if they are carrying out repairs or maintenance on their boats but are not permitted to reside permanently”, the Authority said.

It added that nobody should be living on a houseboat at a leisure mooring, nor should they be registered to vote at the marina, as it is not residential.

A handful of boaters – including Polanski – registered to vote at Springfield Bungalow, which is owned by Lee Valley Regional Park Authority and let as private rental accommodation. The Authority said the property was used for “post and out of hours deliveries”.

Last year, a member of Authority staff moved into the property, meaning it was removed as a postal option, and any boaters who were registered there were removed.

The Authority refused to comment on Polanski’s individual case but said the process for managing breaches of agreement ranges from “initial informal discussions to the final stage of agreement termination if a breach has not been resolved”.

What about electoral rules?

Niedle noted that if it had been true that Polanski only stayed on the houseboat “occasionally”, he may have broken electoral law by registering to vote at a bungalow near the marina, which served as his postal address.

But even if Polanski was living on the boat full-time – as he has admitted to – he could still be in breach of electoral rules. It all depends on whether the Green Party leader can legally be described as a “resident” at the waterside bungalow where he – and several others – were registered on the electoral roll until 2025.

Tom Gillie, an electoral law specialist at Matrix Chambers, said the rules surrounding residences are a “grey area”, as it is possible to be eligible to register to vote even if you are not a resident in a building, but there needs to be a “sufficiently close connection”.

According to the Electoral Commission, boaters without a permanent mooring are “entitled to make a registration by declaration of local connection at a place where they spend a substantial amount of their time”, such as a boatyard used for maintenance.

But Gillie told The i Paper: “There is certainly a grey area between a traditional residence and impermanence, and difficult questions are bound to arise when a person lives in a place fleetingly or lives in movable accommodation.

“In those circumstances, the person will be required to show that they have a sufficiently close connection to a particular electoral district which may in practice be difficult to demonstrate so far as fleeting visits are concerned.”

He added: “Whatever the circumstances, however, the law requires people to be truthful about the location of their residence: one cannot pretend to live somewhere one does not in order to get onto the electoral register.”

Polanski did not respond to a request for comment.