I live here?

[ButternutSoup]

My husband and I are South African and are immigrating to the UK (with an ancestry visa as my grandmother is British). While we were researching nice places to live, we stumbled upon this funny website called ilivehere.co.uk, where people write scathing reviews of their towns/cities. It must be satire, as nearly every town is made out to be some kind of crime-infested hellhole, which can't be true.

Some of the reviews do seem to contain elements of truth, I'm sure, but which ones? I've always had a romantic notion of living in the Scottish Highlands, but the "I Live Here" review makes it seem like the setting of The Hills Have Eyes.

Can anyone here recommend nice towns/suburbs? Our three criteria are: low crime rate, clean air, and house prices that are not clown-shoes expensive. We don't care that much about weather (my irritatingly pale skin has had enough sunshine for a lifetime and every time I go to the dermatologist his warnings become more severe), so maybe somewhere up north would be nice?

Between the gushing estate agent write-ups and the pessimistic "I Live Here" reviews, I don't know what to believe.

Inverness
Perthshire (probably not Perth itself)
Stirling are all pretty nice if you're thinking north.

Edinburgh is expensive, albeit not London expensive.

@ButternutSoup i have family who moved to SA in 2010 & completely understand why you want to leave. It’s very sad as I always wanted to visit but I’ll never go.

now on to the Scottish highlands. Get ready for this…we have trains, hospitals, shops, bars, restaurants, green space, clean air, relatively low cost although I think many of us are finding things very tight our economy is not great and don’t even get me started on our government. What do you think of when you think about the Scottish highlands? Hills and sheep? 😂

There are loads of lovely places where you will feel safe, and would have clean air. Because you might not have loads of money to buy I would recommend the Derby Dales, which is slightly cheaper than the peaks but still lovely. My friends parents came over from South Africa for all the reasons you have said and I know their beautiful South African property didn’t translate to much over here and actually they live in a slightly run down midlands area, but they love it, feel safe and have thrown themselves into the community.

British people are taught to hate their own country, so that is going to influence everything people say.

For sure lots of British towns are grim, though even the worst of them often have nice bits, especially round the edges. One of the problems with the UK is the overcrowding. There are just too many people jammed onto this little island, and it really affects quality of life. If you are expecting the countryside to be like something out of Wind in the Willows, think again. Pretty much every village, even the smallest, now has a hideous new housing estate grafted onto it.

I live in Colchester and utterly hate the place. The population has exploded in the last 20 years, and developers have jammed new houses and flats onto every bit of available land. Developers even hacked down my local woods. The houses are tiny, overpriced, and squeezed on top of one another, with barely any personal space (if you are an introvert, who craves space and silence, avoid central and southern England). We have a small market town with the population of a small city. The traffic is so bad I hardly go out, and when I do I return home stressed and exhausted.

Also, avoid Luton, Stevenage, Basildon, Romford and Harlow. There are plenty more horrible towns, but those are the ones that spring to mind.

If you want to start off near London then commuter towns where you can rent a 2 bed flat and access to nice country (not much cultural life (a few exceptions like Cambridge) but you get that in London)

Look at - St Albans, High Wickham, Haywards Health, Epping, Colchester, Chichester, Canterbury, Ipswich, Cambridge, Sevenoaks, Woking, Eastbourne (the latter two on the coast). also the not great but not awful category - Reading, Guildford, Beckenham.

You could also look further out to cities like Oxford, Winchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Bath.

Prices and commuting times will vary (Colchester is cheaper than Cambridge as you’d expect), but I think if you start with the London commuter ring you can at least get a grip on what you might like.

Since your first move is going to be temporary and your budget not very high, I’d consider a two bed flat in a nicer area, rather than a 2 bed house in a less nice one - that way you can build a sense of what you’re looking for from a safe place.

As long as you stick to broadly decent areas (and TBH even if you didn’t..) nothing is going to even approach SA for crime. Tell estate agents what you want, not what your budget is, to avoid being ripped off for rent.

Good luck with the move. The Uk is far from trouble free but from a global perspective it’s a decent place to live with good opportunities in many areas.

That’s a very South East perspective though - the rest of the county is much less crowded.

Herefordshire - lots of interesting small towns - Ledbury, Weobley etc. And lovely villages, if that is your thing. Borders south Wales so beautiful scenery on tap, and the Malverns not far away. Trains to London/Bristol/Cardiff.

Sheffield
Do you need a garden for your cats?

OP, the I live here site for Inverness/Highlands is satire (and bad satire at that). Don't take that site into consideration at all, the person who wrote it has purposefully made it sound horrible.

Areas of Inverness to avoid: Merkinch, Hilton, Dalneigh.

"Naice" areas: Culloden, Inshes, Holm, Crown

South Wales has some nice places, beautiful countryside and isn't too spendy for house prices.

Seriously. Not London (or London commuter belt). People suggesting this haven't clocked your budget.

Love these types of thread

OP We love the idea of the Scottish Highlands, but yes, likely North UK

ManyMumsnetters Here is a list of places around London.... * *

Hahaha I’ve just read it… it’s quite accurate in a lot of ways 😂

But yes on the whole Inverness/Highlands is a v nice place to live. The main issue is that there aren’t many opportunities for young people.

I'm so sorry about your experiences and your sort of forced move away from your country. My best friend had to do the same after being held at gunpoint at work in SA and I can only imagine your devastation.

Having been to SA and experienced the environment there myself, I would say that anywhere in the UK will feel safe to you in comparison. You don't really need to worry about that when choosing where to live - violent crime is rare here and while you will see antisocial behaviour in larger towns and cities, it is non weaponised and largely fuelled by alcohol and stupidity. I've lived in London pretty much all my life and have never felt unsafe, or been the victim of a crime. The only time I've been a victim of crime in my life was, funnily enough, while visiting my friend in SA. Go figure!

If you need to be in London for work, you will need to be in either a London suburb or in a surrounding commuter town with good rail links to London. If you both hope to earn around £60k per year then you will have plenty of options for rentals, while you get settled and find your bearings, ready to move somewhere more permanent. Those suggesting places outside of the SE are not giving you feasible options if you get London-based office jobs - we are having increasing numbers of train strikes here, and train fares are hideously expensive. If you moved somewhere like Herefordshire or Cheshire and needed to commute to London, you'd be spending nearly £1000 a month on train fares alone and hours of your day commuting. If you can't predominantly work from home in your new job, you will need to stay in and around London temporarily.

Leafy London suburbs you might like:

Richmond/Sheen/Twickenham/Kingston areas (South West London)
Ealing (SW London)
Herne Hill/Streatham/Dulwich (South London)
Blackheath/Greenwich (South East London)
Archway/Highgate/Gospel Oak/Hampstead/Golders Green/Finchley (North London)

Further out into the commuter belt, all within a 45 min train ride of London:

Hitchin
St Albans
High Wycombe
Amersham/Chesham
Bedford
Sevenoaks
Tunbridge Wells
East Grinstead
Horsham
Guildford
Farnham
Reading (surrounding villages are very nice, not so much Reading itself)
Windsor

Good luck with the move. I can see lots of people on this thread are very down on the UK, but as someone with a lot of expat friends in London who feel very fortunate to be here, I don't think we know how lucky we are. The UK is a beautiful, safe country, with amazing culture and history and stunning landscapes. We have an excellent public transport system compared to many other countries, can get to mainland Europe quickly and easily, and have access to free and good quality medical care, education and public services. Yes there is a cost of living crisis and yes there are deep social divides and infrastructure problems, but this is the case everywhere. Every country has its problems. It's important to keep things in perspective.

We've lived in various parts of the UK, and the US, and have ended up in a suburb of Newcastle. Northumberland is simply incredible (hills and coast and history) and Newcastle is a canny toon. 😀

The OP has since updated the thread saying she will need to be in London for work for the foreseeable. Hence people suggesting places around London and the SE. Perhaps read the thread before thinking you're the only smart one on here!

If you'd like to live by the sea with a bunch of faux Liberal "alternatives" bankrolled by either their husband or their daddy, I suggest my birth town of Brighton. Otherwise try Bristol.

Worcestershire. Lovely small city surrounded by loads of lovely rural villages. Easy commute to Birmingham and regional hospital (QE) in addition to private hospitals. Private health care costs a lot lower than London because they do not have to pay ridiculous overheads. NHS is in bits at the moment so would strongly advise good health insurance ( I work in the NHS).
Centrally placed to all major road networks so only an hour from Cardiff ( rugby), Bristol and I know plenty of people who commute to London when the rail networks aren’t striking.
Access to M6/M5 for trips to Lake District and in the opposite direction, Devon and Cornwall.
Just as an example I drove back from Newcastle yesterday (210 miles) and door to door it took 4 hours. However, traffic in the UK is very congested at times so on a Friday afternoon the same journey may well have taken 6+ hrs.
If you are moving to the UK then inner cities have high crime rates. Rurally there is still crime but it’s different, more burglaries or vehicle thefts rather than personal threat.
The further north you go the more friendly the locals. As I said I was in Newcastle yesterday, and although the city centre is a bit run down and has its fair share of homeless and beggars you don’t feel at all threatened. On the metro it’s easy to strike up a conversation. DS commented on how different it felt from Birmingham city centre or central London.

London... or another large city. Those do exist outside the SE, don'cha know?

But @EnidSpyton the OP will absolutely not be able to afford to live in Richmond or Highgate on £60k JOINT salary pa! You have misread.

Surely, you need to narrow down where you want to live and work from there. Nobody can do the research for you.

Are you able to get all your money out of SA? We had problems getting a smaller amount from a death in the family.
Also be aware that what you have in ZAR won't go as far on housing as to what you are used to. I can totally understand why you are looking to leave and those are the hard facts of reality of the situation out there. Does your current company offer any kind of internal overseas transfers or vacancies for relocation?

@Angrymum22 Newcastle Uni open day? Fun to people-watch the two streams, one heading to the uni with tote bags ("Make Newcastle Yours") and the other to St James' Park in black-and-white.

But yeah I wouldn't bother with London tbh it's just a massive global city and it doesn't have that much in common with the rest of the country. Also with some exceptions London is really only great if
A) You're a (born or adopted) Londoner
B) You're young(ish)

Many of us provincials go to London after uni, do a decade there and then either stick (becoming an adopted Londoner) or twist (get the hell our of dodge).
I can't really imagine rocking up to London as a noob in my 40s and enjoying it that much, especially as your budget isn't that great for London. You'll end up in some low-key flat way out of Central and why would you do that when you could go to a different city in the south or Midlands and visit London once a fortnight for a show or something?

"We won't have much choice then, but I am thinking long-term - if and when we are able to choose to move somewhere else."