Checking out Wanstead’s new Oxfam Books and Music – probably the busiest shop in the history of busy shops.
Mark Samuels
mark_samuels
Wanstead news roundup, 01.10.10; Food, money and Snow
• Campaigners are calling on Redbridge Council to introduce food waste collections – it is just one of nine London boroughs which does not offer the service. But at the same time well over 1,000 people have been taking part in the Redbridge Conversation, an impressive online tool for weighing up where spending cuts should fall. (More about this tool on Wansteadium later this week.)
• Wanstead resident Chris Rigby, who installed solar panels on his roof in January, has had his first cheque FROM a power company. Scottish Power paid him £175 – a first return on the £8,500 panels, for which he also received a £2,500 grant. This week he told the Daily Mail that he does not now have to use his boiler to heat water between May and September.
• Wanstead cultural event of the week: Peter Snow is speaking at Wanstead Library tonight, Friday, at 7pm. Tickets are £5.
Wanstead’s bookshop: Saturday’s the day
Wanstead’s Oxfam bookshop will open on Saturday morning at 10am, Wansteadium can reveal.
The preparations, which have included completely overhauling the inside of the former travel agent on Wanstead High Street, have been completed; the shelves are filled with books and volunteers have been signed up, though more are still welcome.
Oxfam area manager Mark Appiah confirmed the opening plan to Wansteadium. Reviews from readers welcome here from Saturday.
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Redbridge newsletter could face cut
[picappgallerysingle id=”9380062″]Publication of Redbridge Life, the monthly council newspaper distributed free to houses in the borough, could be cut to once every three months under a plan to be announced by Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles (above).
Council-run newsletters, dubbed “town hall Pravdas” by some, have been criticised by owners of local newspapers for making their business harder. As well as meeting some appetite for local news, they are usually part-funded by advertising.
Thanks to a Freedom of Information request by L Barnett, it is known that 110,000 copies of Redbridge Life are printed each month, and that it has a readership of 250,000. In 2009/10 it was budgeted to cost £141,761, and up to last December, £17,810 of that had been offset by non-council adverts, including some from the NHS, TfL and universities and colleges. The council is aiming to save £4m from its budget this year, and had already been planning to cut the cost of Redbridge Life by £25,000.
Mr Pickles is reported by the Guardian to be about to believed to be about to announce a tightening of the rules. The paper reports:
Under the new rules, it is understood councils will only be allowed to publish free titles four times a year. They will also have to remove any content which appears to praise the council or endorse the quality of its local services, including quotes from local residents
Has Wanstead escaped house price gloom?
More falls in house prices are expected in the coming months, according to at least one survey published this month. But according to one group of close observers, Wanstead appears to have bucked the trend.
On the House Price Crash website, poster Worzel wrote earlier this month that he and his wife had been looking for a house in Wanstead in 2006/7, but had been outbid. At the time the houses on the street he was looking at (unfortunately he doesn’t specify which streets) were being priced at £300k. He wrote:
Recent sales on the roads we were looking at had sales in July of this year for £410-£425k. So about 35ish % up from “peak”… The area in question is fairly close to the olympic site, but still, seems like madness to me for what are small 2/3 bed terraces in Zone 4 with leytonstone on one side, stratford to the south and Redbridge on the other side. The crash is not yet with us!
Fellow poster Miko responded that though he thought Wanstead had a lot going for it, he had found the prices staggering – he cited a three-bedroom semi with small side access to the back garden at £575k, and a larger four-bedroom semi at £725k. He wrote:
If i had taken a bet on Wanstead in 2006/7 I would have bet that the prices would have fallen by now. How wrong I would have been… I was working with a woman a little while back, and we were reading a property paper, she had been divorced a few years and had been forced to sell the house in Wanstead she was just a little short from being able to buy her ex-husband’s share and taking over the mortgage herself. So they sold and she bought a flat.While reading the paper she spotted her old house up for sale and the price that it was on at nearly bought her to tears.
Other posters say there might be an “Olympic effect” bolstering prices, though there is no clear reason why this should be the case, and some speculate that prices will crash in London next year. The numbers of sales are no doubt down on the busy times of the property boom, but the return of Churchill’s to Wanstead High Street hardly seems to be a signal that houses here are not selling. It’s no doubt the case that prices in some roads are holding up while others aren’t doing as well, but any specific examples Wansteadium readers can cite will be welcome, either in comments below or anonymously if you prefer, via e-mail: wansteadium[at]gmail.com. Below is a table, waiting to filled…
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