Islington Green Party council candidate Caroline Russell this week said it is unacceptable that the council continues to pay some staff as limited companies – allowing them to dodge income tax.
At a Policy and Performance Scrutiny council meeting this month, it emerged that some staff working in areas such as IT and social care are being paid as limited companies – despite a council response to a freedom of information (FOI) request in 2012 claiming “neither the council nor HFI [Homes for Islington, the company managing some of the council’s housing stock] has paid a directly employed council official via a personal company in the period dating back to October 2006”.
Caroline Russell said: “It is just not acceptable for public funds to be used to pay directly employed council officials via a personal company.
“Our Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn has said previously: ‘Anyone working directly for the public sector in any capacity should be employed by, and accountable to, the public sector. There should be utter transparency about their employment, and we should not have these ludicrous schemes that are probably to do with tax avoidance and lack of accountability.’ Perhaps Islington’s Labour councillors would do well to listen to their MP?”
