to be fed up of living in a deprived neighbourhood?

[fluffymouse]

We moved neighbourhoods in London to up size. Quite simply we could only afford a place big enough for us as a family in London in a dodgy neighbourhood. By any conventional marker the area is very deprived. It has a rather notorious reputation too, and has meant some people have been reluctant to visit us.

I have tried being positive about the area (it is on the up, like all areas of London that are not already up!). I am starting to think it would be nice to just move out to a nice village now.

Pros of our area:
Good community feel
Crime rate acceptable by London standards
Feels safe for the most part
Diverse neighbourhood - good ethnic foods

Cons:
Drug dealing neighbours who have been verbally abusive and threatening
Antisocial behaviour issues
Very few of the parents at dd's preschool speak English - limiting opportunities for play dates
Local schools - most do well considering, but children starting with attainment well below average, high turnover of pupils, and lots of pupils at early stage of English language acquisition
Very poor provision for children despite there being lots of children in the area - put simply no one bothers to provide as it wouldn't be taken up for the most part. No ballet, gym etc. Even the children centres offer very little.

WIBU to move us all out to a beautiful village up north where we can get a 4 bed house for the price of a bedsit here?

I know a lot of people who moved out of London for more square footage and now secretly regret it. So glad we are staying for good!! Bloody love my life here

Well my little one is not 12, he is 8. No doubt he will be swimming and going to the shops with his mates at 12, (though to be honest, he won't be wandering around any major cities without an adult). He will also have had loads of experience of negotiating friendships and relationships without constant adult supervision.

I'm not knocking London; I lived there after university for five years and had a great time. I wouldn't want to raise a family there though. I read these threads about ridiculous house prices and lack of school choices, in utter horror.

I have space, freedom and an excellent state education for my four children, I have a nice big house in a naice village, hills out of my bedroom window and 40 minutes from my door to the centre of Liverpool or Manchester for myself. It wouldn't suit everyone, but it suits me. I bet it would suit the OP too.

I don't think anyone is trying to say that any other town or city has museums etc to rival London but rather that London isn't the only place with museums etc.

If people want to live in London with all the opportunities that brings then please do so. Enjoy it.
But do also understand that other people live in other parts of the county and also enjoy it.

Laughing so much about the arguments about museums!! Really-that's what makes "The City" so great?! My kids wouldn't want to be dragged round museums every other weekend! My kids don't give a fig about our local Michelin starred restaurants. They want to hang out with friends, chuck a rugby ball around, catch the bus and go shopping. They mix with neighbours in our village ranging from their age to 84. They get involved with country activities with other kids and adults. The weather forecast has relevance because they don't spend their lives hidden away in the world of inside!

Perhaps we don't have everything right on our doorstep up here but we don't need it-the pace of life is different. There is time to chat, to stop for a cuppa or a beer. If we need to drive 20 miles to our nearest beautiful, historic city we can be there in under 30 minutes, parked up for a couple of quid and ready to find the culture! And the chances are we'll probably meet someone we know there too. A quick jaunt down the motorway to the next city-they have Harvey Nicks there now you know! And in a couple of hours we can get to the opposite side of the country in the time it takes so many of you Southerners to commute to work.

A lady came to visit our area recently to walk her dog-lived in one of them there big cities already mentioned. The dog ran off, just around sunset. She frantically hunted for it and met a friend of mine, also a dog owner. Within a couple of hours (through the power of facebook) a group of total strangers were out hunting for the dog well into the night. The search continued again once the sun was up. Dog was found by someone else and eventually reunited with the owner. She was amazed-not that the dog had been found, but that the community were prepared to come out in the middle of the night to help a complete stranger.

OP if you want to move up North, you will find it a different experience to London. But for all the right reasons! Please come! But all you miserable negative buggers who think the civilised World ends anywhere passed Watford Gap-please stay where you are and choke on your overpriced international cuisine that you seem to think is the be all and end all!

She was amazed-not that the dog had been found, but that the community were prepared to come out in the middle of the night to help a complete stranger.

I guess people need to be entertained somehow.

If they believe the world ends past Watford gap then you probably don't need to tell them to stay away they weren't coming in the first place.

Right, I propose a truce. There are lots of lovely places to live in the UK. I don't believe that the world ends at the Watford gap.
Children can be raised happily in villages or towns or cities. if our family moved to a rural area, my DCs would miss all the mod cons of a city lifestyle because it's all they've ever known. if you live in the countryside or by the beach and you moved to a city, you and your family would hate it.
One thing that I will not concede is that Londoners are unfriendly and none of us ever speak to each other because it's just not true.
Maybe we should ask a TV company to do a kind of North/South and/or city/country wife swap type thing?

Would I still be allowed to laugh at a 'lovely apartment with outside space' that is an ex council flat with a 3x6 balcony over looking boarded up shops with a mattress dumped outside for £250000 on Location Location Location?

Would I still be allowed to laugh at a 'lovely apartment with outside space' that is an ex council flat with a 3x6 balcony over looking boarded up shops with a mattress dumped outside for £250000 on Location Location Location?

Yes. I love London-based LLLs. Is this an actual episode, or are you taking creative license?

Move up north. But not to a village. (Trust me, I moved from London to Royston Vesey, and it was awful).

If you are living in a neighbourhood with the pros and cons you describe, why don't you do something about the cons? Especially if it's an up and coming neighbourhood, your property could be worth 1000% more as so many Londoners have found, which would secure your wealth for the future if you were to move then?

Why don't you make the most of the lovely community spirit to find out if you can join forces to root out the anti social behaviour and drug dealing?

Surely the police and neighbourhood watch schemes can help you and your friendly neighbours/shopkeepers/restaurant owners/school staff and give you log books to record dates, times and names, use your own mobile phones/cctv cameras (may be you can install them or buy inexpensive ones yourselves if the police can't provide you with them) and then give regular reports to all the authorities police/social services/schools/council/housing association until the problem is sorted?

Why would anyone turn a blind eye to antisocial behaviour and drugdealing if they live in the same area especially if they had children?!

Sorry if all this has already been suggested upthread (have not read it all)

Sorry in advance if I'm being horribly naiive.

wotoodoo, ime you are being naive regarding drug dealers.

AndyWarholsOrange Mon 09-Feb-15 23:13:21

Yes. Its our capital city of course its going to have lots going on.

As for musuems, I mentioned a while back - with the words, "with small children". In winter.

The thing Is I am only just coming to love museums and thats because in our rural idly, the museum was a horrid room with boards of material and boring photos of what our town looked like, stuck to them with pins.

I live in the South Lakes and its definitely not grim up here! You can barely move for land rovers, labs and hessian Booths shopping bags.

We really don't have to worry about crime or safety.

It's true that cultural opportunities are more limited, but you are in Manchester in an hour or so. It's true too that there aren't hundreds of fab restaurants - tends to be a handful of very very nice ones indeed and then very ordinary ones. That said there are some really good pubs where we are - I can think of two where you could go for a really special delicious meal.

Schools are often fab. I have lots of friends in London and the angst about schools is huge, either they are all in the very competitive private system or are trying to manoeuvre into good state schools. Plenty of state schools are good in London, and gone is the myth of the inner city sink school, no doubt about it, but goodness it seems to be constant striving to make sure your kids will get in where you want them to go. Where we are there are two outstanding comprehensives and then two selective very academic grammars over the county line.

Lived in London for ten years (Hackney). It was great, as a free slinging professional with sufficient cash, and no children /schools etc to worry about. If we lived there now our careers would be in a much better place and we would be much better off (at least we would probably be sitting on more assets i.e. equity in a house) but I think day to day life would be so much harder (we have free grandparent childcare up here).

The trick is to find the right place to move to - at the end of the day it will be a bit of a lottery whether you happen to find like minded friends. I would move and rent for a bit and really get to know your area well, then buy when you are really clued up.

Bear in mind if you move out of London for up north, it is very very hard to go back given differences in house prices.

Goodbye. It was an actual episode, this current series so it might be on 4OD still.
I might have made up the price, but I know it was lots more than my 3 bed semi over looking a park.
Honestly, they were in raptures over this flat which looked out onto a busy road with boarded up shops and a dumped mattress.

So by that the drug dealers get away with it!

Isn't it possible to give the police/your local mp/housing association names and addresses of known drug dealers anonymously with some covert surveillance as evidence?

Why don't you pm the names and addresses to me and then I can alert the authorities on your behalf if you are too intimidated to do so?

Surely if enough people did this the authorities would have no choice but to do something?

Nooo! Don't move up North, and especially avoid Cheshire/Hale/South Manchester. I had moved back to London and still can't believe how lucky I am! There are so many parks/museums/theatres on the doorstep, we are doing something new each weekend. Kids love it too. Here is my old thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/a1122705-To-hate-living-in-Manchester-and-North-in-general

Museums are boring.

If I could move from a mortgaged house in a horrible area to live mortgage free in a lovely house in a naice area I would leave London. But we are in the position of never being able to afford to buy, so rent a lovely little house in a naice area of suburban West London and we love it.

I think DD (4) would have a better quality of life outside London especially if we lived by the sea (my hometown), but DS (12) would hate to ever leave and has made us promise not to. He plays out with his friends, goes to the skate park, and is just starting to venture into town independently. I wish I had grown up here, it's so exciting for them and he can pretty much pick a hobby and do it without the facilities not being available or needing us to drive him around.

No random , people who don't like museums are boring.

Yes, mother.

Re the museum thing- when I was a kid, I hated museums because they were mostly looking at things in glass cases. Pretty much all the London museums are so incredibly child friendly and hands on. The British Museum does backpacks and an explorer trail and even young children mingle quite happily with all the academics and tourists.

My experience of modern museums is of too much push-button, 'interactive' crap. It's usually broken too. I prefer the glass case approach.

My kids love the Saatchi gallery and V&A.They always ask to go there. Maybe because it is usually followed by a trip to McD... :)