Moving to the UK - location advice

[wisteriahouse]

Hi all,

My husband and I will be relocating to the UK next year from Australia. We have a seven year old son and will be looking for jobs upon arrival (husband works in IT, I am a lawyer).

We have been looking at different locations to settle including London and Leeds. Our requirements are excellent schools, good transport links (we will be using public transport only), local shops/pubs/restaurants/high street. Our budget is around £1,300pm.

Coming from a “new” country, we are looking forward to immersing ourselves in the history and culture and would value having these options readily available without having to venture too far away. We enjoy going out for meals, walks/bike rides, enjoying the outdoors, swimming etc. We are hoping to travel around Europe on a regular basis (mostly long weekend trips) so convenience to an airport would be a plus.

Any suggestions would be welcomed! It’s so hard to plan things from the other side of the world and we don’t want to drag our son around while we decide on an area as we want to get him settled in a school asap.

I agree 1300 a month won't get you even a studio in London. A decent 3 bed flat for your family would be at least 2500-3000 and more if you want a decent place and excellent schools

Where I work in NW London (zone 6), the only things within a 3 mile radius for £1,300 are studio and 1-bed flats.

Definitely up north will have a much better chance to give you a bedroom for your child.

I agree with others though in that I'd really suggest looking for a job before you move, or at least get the ball rolling. With Zoom/Teams being so prevalent now you would be able to have initial interviews online.

Others can (and have) advised better on location options, but I think a lot more research and planning is needed at this stage.

Consider affluent market towns. If you want a local life with community and decent standards of living. I live in Leamington Spa/ Warwick and recommend it.

Forget London and the south east. You are dreaming if you think £1.3k a month is going to provide viable family accommodation.

Guildford

Do you have the funds to pay 6-12 months rent upfront? If not then I think you’ll struggle to find anywhere to rent without already having employment. Even with rent upfront you may still struggle as a lot of landlords will have concerns that if you haven’t found employment by the time the money runs out they’ll be stuck with ‘squatters’ and a lengthy eviction process, so you could be deemed too risky. Especially in cities such as London where the rent crisis means they will easily have an array of already employed tenants to pick from.

Your best bet is to secure jobs beforehand and work everything else out from there.

Jobs wise it all really depends on what you both do, what kind of careers you want to pursue, can you work remotely etc. London can give you a better earning power and more career opportunities. If you want to enjoy a nice expat life, international community, holidays and meals out etc, I would personally be in London/near London but then you really need to up your rent budget.

How can you relocate here if you haven’t got jobs? I don’t even mean financially as you could have savings, but don’t you need certain visas etc before you can relocate here? I would have thought you would need a job offer at least?

I couldn’t move to Australia and get a job when I get there…. I’m wondering how it’s different?

Do you not need jobs first for visa reasons?

Yes you do. You can be here for up to 6 months without working. More info here- www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa

Yes, and even registered sponsors won't sponsor for every role. It depends on the hiring manager, whether they have budget approval for a visa.

However it's unlikely that the OP's family require work visa sponsorship as that would require having a job before arrival. It's illegal to job search when entering as a tourist. So I'm guessing they're dual citizens or on the young person visa.

You won’t get any rental property without a job as there is a background check to check affordability.

As others have said, you won’t be able to afford London. My recommendation is to look at towns down the main railway lines into London and see how far out you would need to go to afford something you like for £1300pcm. I live in Bedfordshire and you can get the train to London in 30 mins. You could afford a small house, but you still won’t have much change from £1300 and then you need to factor in utilities and council tax. Even with in cities like Manchester or Leeds you may find it a struggle.

No offence but it sounds a bit like you haven’t thought this through properly. We have a tv show here where people experiment living in Oz and NZ for a week to see if they could realise their unrealistic dream of emigrating there and this sounds like the reverse of that 🤨

@Squeezetheday No offence but it sounds a bit like you haven’t thought this through properly - it actually sounds like OP has started this thread because it’s part of her process of “thinking it through”

that’s literally the point of asking before doing.

😂

Islington, Camden, Waltham Forest, Hackney?
Or south you've got Dulwich, Forest Hill, Camberwell, Peckham, Ladywell, Crystal Palace?

maybe more affordable then places like Woolwich/Charlton, Welling, Plumstead or Croydon?

On that budget?!

Yes you could. You just get a work visa, move there and once there apply for jobs. I know 2 people who have just done it!

@BobbyBiscuits £1300 would have got you a 2-bed flat in Hackney / Waltham forest 20 years aog ( I rented them) so not a chance now.

A very high proportion of Aussies have either got British citizenship or are able to come on an ancestral visa because of a British grandparent that lets them work here for 2 or 3 years. Nearly all my Antipodean relatives have done this. They have all gone home ( even the British passport holders). It seems our dreary weather puts them off eventually. But it’s a great way of keeping our family connections.

Haha, not really relevant to the OP's thread but MN is constantly moaning about how shit the UK is, the crumbling NHS, schools, taxes etc and wanting to emigrate. Australia being a prime suggested destination.

I don't know enough to comment on the QoL - I have relatives there, from what I gather drs etc are paid more but in main cities property prices are expensive + states are so far away from each other.
but my main issue with Australia is how far away it is from everything else! 3 hours flight from the nearest neighbouring country.

A lot of people from Asian countries prefer it as the nearest Anglophile country, being from Southeast Asia I considered it too. But for a 7 hour flight, I wasn't going to visit more frequently than I already do... I want my European city breaks... So I scrapped the idea 🤣

Yeah but surely that can only be long term if you have a job on their skills shortage list? You couldn’t just go and work in a shop and stay there permanently?

I know people can go and work for a while in Australia, as some of my student friends did, but the OP has a child so I’m assuming it’s a permanent move and not for a few months.

Is there any wriggle room on your rental budget?
Would you be able to afford more if you got good jobs?
If you would, then I would rent something small somewhere you would like to live and work from there.
That budget would be nigh impossible in London though. I think I would be inclined to spend more on rent and cut the weekend trips to Europe for a while until you have settled.
What is your main reason for wanting to move to the UK?

I’m inclined to agree. House prices used to be lower, but they increased faster than here. The days of being able to leave a small terraced house in the U.K. and buy a large detached property with pool in Australia are long gone and the visas often require immigrants to live in really remote or poor areas. And I think the distance between places means people go to their local university more often and stay at home longer. All my cousins have their adult kids still living at home, with girlfriends and boyfriends piling in.

I think sending them off to the U.K. to stand on their own feet, get to know extended family better and come back ready to live independently is as appealing to the parents as it is to the kids. They get their house back for a few years! By contrast, my husband’s South African cousins saw the ancestral visa as their escape card. Instead of bumming around, they worked their socks off, got sponsored by their employers for extended visas and have settled in the U.K. it been transferred to offices in North America and settled there.

MN is constantly moaning about how shit the UK is, the crumbling NHS, schools, taxes etc and wanting to emigrate 😂

this made me laugh! So true, Honestly the UK is a breath of fresh air compared to some other countries. I’ve just come back from Canada and the UK GP situation is a million times better than it is in Canada. Another problem out there is drugs. Drugs are everywhere, weed is legal but still a huge proportion of cannabis smoked is of an illegal type . Homelessness is just awful there.

I am so happy to be home!! Even things like children’s books are better in the UK. I arrived back here yesterday and I’ve already put in a big order with Waterstones for books for the children 😂

Even at Gatwick the most immediate difference between here and Canada is the lack of litter and cleaner streets. We were still loving clean streets driving around on the busy M25 😂

Good old Blighty

Where are you relicating to, have you got jobs lined up yet. Will you be getting a relocation package if you're staying with the same employers.

Your jobs don’t match your rent expectations unless you’re thinking of fee paying schools?

friends daughter rents a one bed in Fulham, so a nice bit of London. £2700pcm. Bonkers.

It is not always cheaper up North. Places like Peterborough and Corby, Huntingdon are all commutable to London (1 hr?) and have cheaper housing for the South East. It would be feasible to have a longer commute if you had a hybrid role.

Also plenty of jobs in Peterborough. Plenty of jobs in Cambridge too but easier to commute to London than get stuck on A14 to Cambridge! There’s no way you can live in Cambridge for that budget.

To the north of Peterborough is Lincolnshire which is even cheaper, but more travelling for jobs.