A flurry of articles pitching Leyton as the hot new neighbourhood should be cause for alarm, argues Echo editor Victoria Munro
A spectre is haunting Waltham Forest – the spectre of gentrification.
Two years ago, The Sunday Times named Walthamstow one of London’s best places to live, praising its “arty, crafty shops, street market and pretty houses”. Nowadays, few traders at Walthamstow Market can afford to live locally, as the average price of those pretty houses is well over half a million pounds. In what feels like a sign of the times, the iconic pie and mash shop L. Manze – long considered symbolic of a particularly East End working-class culture – reopened last month as an up-market chain restaurant.
It’s impossible to truly know what stringent assessment goes on behind closed doors at publications like The Sunday Times before they decide where is or is not a nice place to live. At other outlets, however, there is a more clear – and mercenary – process at work. An article on news website Londonist from December last year, entitled “Now Is The Time To Move To Walthamstow – Here’s Why”, was sponsored by housing association L&Q and attempts to flog flats in two of their recently completed developments. In an interesting coincidence, not long afterwards, The Telegraph published an article listing Walthamstow among Britain’s coolest neighbourhoods.
The sole blame for Waltham Forest’s exploding house prices, which jumped more dramatically over the last decade than in any other London borough, cannot be placed at the feet of journalists writing puff pieces. On the other hand, a property with an inflated price tag is worth nothing without someone willing to pull their wallet out. If people already living in the area cannot foot the bill, the only option remaining is to convince someone elsewhere it is a good idea to move in.
This is why it is hard not to view the decision of The Sunday Times’ Style supplement to list Leyton’s E10 postcode among the top ten coolest in the UK earlier this year without some degree of alarm. Entirely coincidentally, the first flats in the area’s immense 750-home development, Coronation Square, are now on sale.
Just yesterday, after the print version of this letter was completed, Metro published an article extolling the virtues of Leyton for “first-time buyers”. The article lists a number of local housing developments, including Coronation Square, and ends with a curiously telling fact-box about the area. It states Leyton is populated by “first-time buyers and young families” and that the level of crime is “slightly below average”, noting that this crime data was supplied by property website Zoopla.
From the perspective of a housing developer, this is the perfect time to expand which swathes of the borough are deemed desirable. If, as alleged in a 2019 TimeOut article on “The trends that defined London in the 2010s”, the prototypical hipster began the decade living in Shoreditch, was “outpriced to Clapton” and “when he was priced out of Clapton[…] moved to Walthamstow” then they may need to move again soon. In 2001, the median house price in Chingford Green was around £50,000 more expensive than in Hoe Street ward. Twenty years later, the reverse is true.
Thankfully for this hypothetical hipster, the prices just next door in Leyton have failed to fully keep up, at least so far. In the last 20 years, the gap between the median house price in Leyton and Hoe Street wards has grown from £9,500 to more than £84,000. If developers like Countryside, who are behind the Coronation Square development, have their way then we could see this close again in the decades to come.
But, when it comes to the sceptre of gentrification, not everyone is scared of ghosts. In the summer of 2020, Waltham Forest Council’s deputy leader Clyde Loakes told cycling podcast Spokesmen: “I don’t like to use the term gentrification. It’s not something that I believe in.”
When given the opportunity to clarify this comment last December, he told the Echo that “stagnating is not an option”, adding that the council “must balance [its] responsibility to attract investment with the need to retain the essential character of the borough”.
“Everyone wants to live in a nicer, cleaner, greener area – the people who will lose out if we do nothing to attract investment will be the people who live, work, and study in Waltham Forest.”
He further explained that financial contributions paid to the council by developers enable “infrastructure and improvements that make life better for everyone in Waltham Forest”, listing Lea Bridge Station, Walthamstow Wetlands and Soho Theatre Walthamstow among assets the borough could not have afforded “without inward investment”.
He added: “Residents will continue to see these improvements in the next few years as the new Lee Valley Ice Centre opens, we develop plans for a new accessible footbridge over Orient Way, and the proposed Low Hall Lido progresses.”
The question that remains is who will still be around to enjoy them.
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