The Green Party said Zack Polanski had until recently been living on a houseboat in London and apologised after questions were raised over whether he should have paid council tax there. A party spokesperson said Polanski had taken steps to pay any council tax he may be found to owe.
“Zack apologises sincerely for the unintentional mistake,” the spokesperson said, adding that he had been living on a houseboat until relatively recently. The boat was moored at a marina in Hackney.
The row sharpened after The Times questioned last week whether Polanski had paid council tax for the boat for the past three years. The paper said it had seen an advertisement to sell the boat in which Polanski’s partner wrote: “We are moving house and so will sadly be leaving the gorgeous community behind.”
The Times also reported that Polanski and his partner appear in recent years to have stayed on a narrowboat at a marina, and that a local laundrette said it had often done their laundry from 2023 to 2025. The Green Party told the paper that Polanski lived in a room he rented at a different address in London, where council tax was included in his rent, and said he only stayed on the boat “occasionally”.
That account left an obvious gap. A boat is liable for council tax when it is used as a person’s sole or main residence, and tax lawyer Dan Neidle wrote this week that if the houseboat was Polanski’s main home, then he and his partner should have paid council tax there. The Mail separately reported that Polanski had been registered to vote at a nearby building used as a postal address by several people thought to have boats in the marina.
The question now is not whether the Green Party wants to close the issue, but whether the facts around where Polanski actually lived for those three years make the apology enough. The party says he is moving to settle any bill that may emerge; the unresolved point is whether the houseboat counted as his main residence all along.
