Confused about Letchworth

[HopBopPop]

We're looking to move out of London, and on paper Letchworth Garden City seems to be a great option for us. We've visited a couple of times to view houses and it's got some big postitives - 30min trains to London, large open spaces and parks, houses which are cheaper than other similar commuter towns - and which are not too close together with larger than average gardens, two decent looking secondary schools which are rated good by Ofsted, lots of other families around.

But we've also read a lot of negative things about Letchworth, mostly involving the council estates which make up the town. But we're worrying that is colouring our attitute to the less positive things we've seen. The town centre definately isn't exactly "thriving" on either weekdays or weekends, and there seem to be a larger than average number of boy racers in loud cars parping around everywhere. We also saw a gang of kids with what looked like several 10 or 11 year old smoking. But I'm worried we're actively looking for bad stuff due to the negative comments we've read, and are making more of this than we should. We're a bit conflicted as cosmetically this seems like such a nice place to live.

Does anyone have any thoughts on Letchworth to help us figure this out?

[Belleende]

The bad news is Letchworth is dully dull dull dull, and a bit rough in places. The good news is, it is 6m by train to hitchin which has a lot more life to it, 20m to Cambridge and 30m to London. It all depends on your priorities, if you want max space for your £ then it is a reasonable choice, if you want somewhere with a bit of life then hitchin is better, but pricier.