The trendy London borough where property millionaires will get a free £100

Described as one of the trendiest places to live in London, Walthamstow Village is known for being home to creative young professionals looking for a quiet neighbourhood to start a family. While once a working-class area, the borough transformed into a trendy and affluent spot with house prices surging over the last decade as couples moved out of inner London. Houses on sought-after streets can now go for up to £1.5m. But these million pound homes sit in low council tax bands, based on what the property would have been valued at in the early 1990s. It means that property millionaires living in the area will be among those to receive £100 payments under a new scheme from the Government announced this week to help cover the cost of rising energy bills next year. Walthamstow residents had mixed views when The i Paper visited on Friday, with some defending the scheme and others insisting it should have been better targeted to those most in need. ‘We don’t need it’ Ellie Stone, 46, an independent theatre producer, thinks the Government providing non-means tested support is “obviously ridiculous”. She lives with her husband, who works in mental health support, in the picturesque area of Walthamstow Village. Every house on her street is rated band D or below for council tax, and one home up for sale is currently listed on Rightmove for £1.5m. To qualify for a mortgage for this amount, with monthly repayments likely to exceed £7,000, a buyer would need to be on a salary of around £230,000-£300,000.Ellie Stone says the Government’s £100 energy bill support should be means tested (Photo: William Lailey/SWNS) Stone says she and her husband were in a “fortunate financial position” to be able to buy in the area two years ago, and prices have increased even more since then. Nick Wilkinson, IT manager in his forties, lives on the same road. He too thinks the Chancellor’s free cash payment was a blunt instrument, applying “too broad brush stroke” for energy bill help. “I don’t need it, my neighbours don’t need it,” he said. “I’d be surprised if there are people on this street who do. “It’s a bit like the winter fuel payment for pensioners,” he said. “It’s not targeted enough.” He thinks payments should be means tested for those “who actually need it”, even if it might “cost the Government” more to work it out. Many in the area will need help Like many other London boroughs, Waltham Forest, where Walthamstow Village is located, has pockets of both poor and extremely wealthy areas. The average house price in the borough is £532,000 below the London average of £554,000 but above the UK average of £273,000. While payments will go to wealthier individuals who may need the money less but are living in properties assessed long ago, there will also be long-time residents of these properties who are living on low incomes despite the increasing value of their homes. Although some house prices are high, the borough has one of the lowest average yearly salaries in London (Photo: William Lailey/SWNS) While some properties may be worth upwards of £1m, Waltham Forest’s average annual income is below that of the typical outer London rate (£53,937). At £47,907, it is one of the lowest across London – although this is above the UK average of £42,926. The majority of the total £2.6bn funding allocated to the energy payments scheme is expected to go to those who need it most, including 83 per cent of fuel-stressed households and 88 per cent of the lowest-income households. Stella Creasy, the MP for Walthamstow, said that 98 per cent of her constituents would be eligible for the scheme. ‘Out with the old guard, in with the hipsters’ Stone described her and husband as typical of the people moving in to Walthamstow Village: “A couple with two decent jobs who are trying to be cool, they want to live in Hackney but this is cheaper so they can afford it.” She said the area is “amazing for families” and added that most of their neighbours moved here to have children. Local estate agent Sean Corrigan said his typical buyer is a couple in their twenties or thirties working in advertising or marketing as a creative director, or working in the City. “There are two camps: often it’s their first time living in London, they’ve come in from the Shires and there’s money from the Bank of Mum and Dad, or they’ve been pushed out of Hackney or Shoreditch,” said Corrigan. “The sellers are people who’ve lived here for a long time, they moved here in the 1960s and 70s when it wasn’t up and coming it was quite gritty and urban,” Corrigan said. “It’s out with the old guard and in with the hipsters, if you want to call them that.” ‘People are struggling’ Sophie Attridge, 26, who runs Stori, a vintage gift shop, thinks the payment should go to everyone the Government has said are eligible. “I talk to a lot of people in the shop, there are people who’ve lived here for 20, 30 years who are struggling,” she said. “Even if you own a home, London is still expensive, and most of them are retired so they don’t have much income.” Sophie Attridge owns a vintage shop in the area and thinks older residents shouldn’t be punished for rising house values (Photo: William Lailey/SWNS) Attridge thinks the older residents of Walthamstow shouldn’t be punished for the value of their home increasing. “In theory they could sell their house and move, but you don’t want to make people move out of their house because they need the money for survival,” she said. Paulina Oledzka, 39, a part-time retail worker, lives with her mother and 12-year-old son in a one-bedroom flat. She thinks help should be targeted for older people and those on benefits. “I think it’s a really good idea to help people who really need it,” she said. “There should be more fairness though. If the value of the house is rising and the people in them have better jobs to pay for them, they are not struggling.” “Older people in big houses should get the help, if they don’t have family to move in with it’s not fair to make them move into a care home,” she said. ‘There are ordinary people in £1m houses’ Ruth and Martin, both long-term Walthamstow residents who moved to the area in the early 1980s, think everyone needs the payments to help with the cost of living. “The people living in £1m houses are often just ordinary people, they still can’t afford to pay for their shopping at the end of the week,” he said. He thinks means testing would be “very tricky to manage” and wouldn’t be “cost-effective” for the Government. Another long-term resident, Ruth, agreed it would be a “false economy” to think that means testing would give the payment to the right people. “It’s the deserving and undeserving poor argument,” she said. “Even someone in a £1m house isn’t to blame for the war in Ukraine driving up fuel costs”. “They are welcome crumbs from the table, but they are crumbs,” said Martin. Announcing the scheme when he delivered his first Budget on Wednesday, the Chancellor, John Healey, said the £100 payments, coming alongside the other announcements including the abolishment of standing charges on gas bills, would give British families “breathing space” on their energy bills.