18 The Sunday Times December 19, 2021MONEY
The amount likely
to have been lent
in mortgages in
2021 — up 31 per
cent on last yearContact us Money,
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moneybulletin. The bulletin is
exclusive to digital subscribersReturn this year-20% 0 20 40 60 80 100
Data up to December 8. Sources: BMO, Bloomberg, BofA Merrill LynchBitcoin
Te sla
Oil futures
S&P 500
FTSE 100
Shanghai SE Composite
US government bonds
Gold futures
UK government bondsBitcoin had a higher
return than stock
markets this year,
soaring 81.5 per cent
to December 8. Shares
performed better than
bonds: the S&P 500
(the index that tracks
500 of the largest US
stocks) is up 30.8 per
cent while the FTSE
100 of the largest UK
stocks, is up 17.6 per
cent. Commodities
were a mixed bag, with
oil futures returning
50.9 per cent but gold
losing 2.8 per cent.CHART OF THE WEEK A YEAR ON THE MARKETS
£316bn
Lenders give landlords a lift with new deals
Lenders are allowing
landlords to borrow more in a
sign of growing confidence in
the buy-to-let market. TSB
now lends up to 80 per cent
loan-to-value (LTV), up from
75 per cent, while Foundation
Home Loans, a specialist
lender, has deals at 85 per
cent LTV, up from 80 per cent.
The shifts follow a change
last week by Metro Bank,
which added 80 per cent LTVbuy-to-let mortgages to its
range. “This is a significant
shift in the market,” said
Chris Sykes from the
mortgage broker Private
Finance. “The changes are
indicative of the confidence
lenders have and the scope
they believe they have for
growth.”
Most mainstream lenders
allow landlords to borrow up
to 75 per cent of a property’s
value and only approve more
than that on properties withvery high rental yields. The
lenders’ rates are more
expensive the higher the
LTV, but market competition
could drive down rates.
Foundation Home Loans’
85 per cent LTV two-year fix,
the lowest rate on the market,
is 4.79 per cent. The lowest
buy-to-let mortgage rate is a
two-year fix at 0.99 per cent
from The Mortgage Works,
part of Nationwide Building
Society, available at 65 per
cent LTV.Ali Hussain125,000 high earners fail to repay benefit
The number of high earners
failing to pay back their child
benefit has doubled in a year.
The taxman said that
125,594 people earning more
than £50,000 a year had not
registered for self-assessment
to repay some of the benefit
for the 2019-20 tax year, or
had paid back too little. This
time last year the figure was
63,591, so there has been a
rise of 98 per cent.The number who repaid
correctly or did not claim was
997,000. Experts say that as
many as one in eight higher
earners may be getting their
repayments wrong.
Child benefit changes have
saved the Treasury £9 billion.
Since 2013, households with
someone earning more than
£50,000 have to pay back
some of the benefit. If you
earn over £60,000 you get
nothing. Many families say
they had no idea that theyhad to repay the benefit
because HM Revenue &
Customs had not publicised it
enough. Some say they were
caught out because, as
employed workers, they had
never needed to fill in a tax
return before and did not
realise they needed to now.
About 400 families are
taking legal action against
HMRC over fines. HMRC said
it had sent 470,821 letters
since 2013 to remind people
what they owed.David Byersthe city he forbade me from seeing her
again. We ran away to a one-bedroom
basement flat in Brighton, which she
paid for, then her dad rang my dad and
said, “Unless your son leaves my
daughter alone my men will beat him
so hard that he’ll never play the piano
again for the rest of his life.” So that was
the end of that.
I borrowed £5 from her to go to
London and got a job as a projectionist
at the National Film Theatre. On days off
I wrote music and practised the piano.
Everything took off from there.Are you better off than your parents?
Yes. My father worked as a traffic
superintendent in Shaftesbury Avenue
telephone exchange. He always hoped to
be manager but he didn’t quite make it.
We had a nice house down in Brighton,
but he was very mean. He came from a
very poor Plymouth Brethren family and
never forgot his humble beginnings. My
mother worked in a luggage shop
on Upper Street in Islington, north
London, but money was not discussed in
the family and I’ve always cared moreHoward Blake’s
heartwarming
The Snowman is
still performed
around the worldH
oward Blake was born in
London in 1938 and grew up
in Brighton, where his talent
as a pianist was spotted at
grammar school. He won
a Hastings Musical Festival
scholarship to the Royal
Academy of Music at 18, but
left after falling out with his
tutors. He composed for TV
and film, including the score for Ridley
Scott’s The Duellists and Flash Gordon,
with the rock band Queen. He is best
known for The Snowman, including the
song Walking in the Air. He recently
objected to a version of this work that
had been due to premiere on BBC Radio
3 on Christmas Eve, featuring narration
by Stephen Fry. Divorced three times, he
has three adult children, Christopher,
Catherine and Robert. He lives in
Kensington, west London.How much money is in your wallet?
I usually keep about £100 in twenties,
which I’ll spend on coffees or taxi tips. I
was the victim of an ATM fraud recently.
This guy — who I thought belonged to the
bank — had put a device on the machine
outside the Royal Bank of Scotland on
Kensington High Street, so all three of
my cards got stuck, then he stole them
when I went in to investigate. I got
them cancelled before he had a chance
to use them, but I now try to use only
ATMs inside banks. I like cash, though.What credit cards do you use?
I’ve got a Coutts credit card, although
I don’t let the debts run up.Are you a saver or a spender?
I wouldn’t call myself a spender and
I have a very curious financial set-up.
I get royalties from all 727 of my works,
including films, ballets, commercials,
shows and symphonies. I like to make
sure that I always have at least £1 million
in the bank. I never let the balance go
below that.How much did you earn last year and
what impact has the pandemic had?
The pandemic has had little impact
because the royalty cheques have
continued to arrive from all over the
world, including payments from Taiwan
and Dubai, where The Snowman was
being performed. A firm called Chester
Music administers the rights to The
Snowman, and the fee is different for
different territories. Every now and then
I’ll get a cheque for £150,000. December
does tend to be a good month.
It’s impossible to say exactly how
much The Snowman has earned me over
the decades but it’s fair to say it’s several
million pounds. During the 1970s and
1980s I composed music for 204
commercials for brands including
British Airways, Shell and Imperial, and
for 84 films, which I might have been
paid £20,000 each for. At one point I
was creating music for three adverts a
day and being paid about £300 for each
so I was earning nearly £1,000 a day,
which is about £6,000 in today’s money.
This Christmas I’ll be taking a share of
the box office for Sadler’s Wells’ version
of The Snowman, and I may make a few
pennies from Spotify streaming.Have you ever been really hard-up?
I left the Royal Academy of Music
because they told me I was only good
enough to make a career teaching piano
in schools. I told them I’d rather be a
dustman and left, but my father said
that I needed to get a job so I was a
porter earning £3 10s a week at the
Adelphi Hotel in Brighton. I was so inept
that I was sacked after two weeks.
I was crazy about movie scores and
ended up getting a job as a projectionist
at Brighton’s Paris Cinema, where I was
paid £6 a week. I was seeing a very
beautiful girl whose father was the
richest man in Brighton but was also a
crook. When he found out that his
daughter was seeing someone working
in what he called the filthiest fleapit inThe royalties are still rolling in for the composer of
the Christmas classic The Snowman, so he can eat at
a fancy restaurant every day, he tells Nick McGrathover. If my balance drops below
£1 million I might do something else.What has been your best investment?
Myself and my music. The three months
I spent in a beach hut in Cornwall on
Perranporth Beach — when I took some
time out from the mayhem of composing
for commercials — was probably my best
investment. It’s where the first thoughts
for The Snowman came into my head.
I wanted to write a symphony that
expressed the complete innocence and
beauty that we are all born with. It felt
as though the idea came from God, if
you believe in God. Somehow, I think
I plugged into some force larger than
me. People say it was my guardian angel,
so I guess you could say God made me
millions, but I’d never tried to. All I
tried to do is make great music.And the worst?
I get requests from all over the world
regularly to adapt my music, so I have
to be very careful to protect the work’s
integrity and I had a issue this year.
I was very disturbed by what happened
with a BBC Radio 3 version of The
Snowman, which was due to be
broadcast on Christmas Eve and on
Radio 4 on Christmas Day. The
instruments’ sound was replicated by a
choir, but after I made my feelings clear
the BBC withdrew it. I told them it will
kill The Snowman because it’s so
inappropriate and so badly done that
people will never want to listen to The
Snowman again. I said: “I’m not going
to allow you to put this desecration out.”Your most extravagant purchase?
I paid about £7,500 for my Steinway
grand piano but that’s a tool of my trade.
I paid £4,000 for a bust of Bizet, and
I’ve got another bust, of Beethoven,
which I paid £3,000 for.What’s your money weakness?
Eating out. When I moved here in 1981
I vowed to myself that I’d eat one very
good meal every single day, so I eat at
a very good restaurant once a day.
That’s my extravagance.What is your financial priority?
Staying solvent. Which is looking pretty
good at the moment. But you never
know what happens in this life.What would you do if you
won the lottery?
It wouldn’t make any difference to me.
The only thing I might do is put on a
concert series of all my music.Do you support any charities?
The Salvation Army is a fantastic charity
and I make regular donations. And I help
people if I feel they need helping.What is the most important lesson
you’ve learnt about money?
That it’s a good idea to have it. If you
have money you’re a power in the land.
If something goes wrong you can help to
put it right, so you’re a useful person.The Snowman is at the Peacock Theatre,
London, to January 2; peacocktheatre.comabout music than money. I have devoted
my whole life to writing music that
pleases people.Do you own a property?
The house I live in, a purpose-built
1895 artist’s studio with 17ft ceilings, is
all I have. It’s on a 150-year lease. I paid
about £150,000 for it in 1980 and the
mortgage is paid off. It’s worth about
£2.5 million now. At one point, when I
had a Swedish girlfriend, I owned four
houses abroad. I think most of the
money devolved to the Swedish
girlfriend. But it was worth it.Do you invest in shares?
I’ve never invested in shares, outside my
pension. I haven’t the time to look after
my 727 works, let alone start thinking
about somebody else’s business.What’s better for retirement —
property or pension?
I’m not going to retire. I’ll just die
eventually. I do have a pension with
Standard Life and Norwich Union, but
the steady royalties will keep me tickingFAME AND FORTUNE HOWARD BLAKE
‘I make sure
I always have
at least £1m
in the bank’
Every now
and then
I’ll get a
cheque for
£150,000
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