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?

When I was looking at primary schools near me, nearly all had ESL/EAL over 70%, a few over 80% and there was one that was (at one stage at least) something like 98%. There was an Ofsted report for one of these schools that commented that about half these children arrived in reception speaking no English at all.

The schools do get much higher funding than primary schools generally, so thought their KS1 results are below average, their KS2 results are average.

TBH if a primary school is friendly and has good aspirations for the kids, it really doesn't matter much who attends it. You will probably get better teaching, frankly.

Another thing that people forget with regard to non native speakers of English is that becoming bilingual offers cognitive enhancement and so they often do better than expected at school, after controlling for their overall intelligence and family background and so on. We're doing a study on this at work and it is really throwing up some interesting data. Basically there's an argument for all kids being educated in a second language.

If your jobs are transferable it's a complete no brainer IMO. If you move to somewhere like Leeds, York or Manchester you're only a couple of hours from Central London by train so you can still go and enjoy it, but have an infinitely better quality of life. I don't know why anyone who has a choice would stay in london

I wouldn't want my dc to attend a school where the vast majority don't speak English as a first language. I'd worry they wouldn't make friends

I'm so London biased it's unreal!

I do hate it when London is slated as dirty, dangerous, unfriendly - it really isn't in many areas, it's a wonderful wonderful place for kids as well as adults and I live very centrally - the people that say they'd never live here maybe don't know the city very well.

But my experience is very positive i.e. not living in deprived area, lots of friends and family near.

Your situation is your situation and yes why not move to another city where you can afford a lovely house in a nicer area.

Re non-English speaking kids and families - it's all very well in theory looking at the positives, but it's difficult and alienating in practice and I get that ti's harder for both you and the dc.

I think you need to list what is a priority for you in terms of job availability, and what you want in terms of local amenities.

We relocated a few times due to Dh's work but came back Norf 10 years ago. We chose a large city for job opportunities for Dh and then narrowed down our area to schools, and motorway access.

We live in West Yorkshire and our house is under your budget, it is a 4 bed detached house on a naice modern estate. I would love a period property but quite frankly the location sold this house to us. I am home in the day and feel completely safe.

My SIL lived next door to a drug dealer for years, we advised her to move but she insisted that the frequent police raids would sort that out soon. It did take years. She used to keep her curtains shut so that the criminals visiting next door for a fix couldn't see her possessions. Too sad. Not a life I would want to lead.

Have a weekend away somewhere you are interested in. We have friends who love London and live within the M25 ring and it takes them 2 hours to get here by train.

I can't believe people are saying £300k won't get you anything in a decent area in the Midlands. It will.

I agree Ken, we lived in the Midlands for a bit. £300k will buy you a very nice house. I can not get over London house prices. My sons see Homes under the Hammer and cannot believe that 1/4 million gets you a bedsit!

' I wouldn't want my dc to attend a school where the vast majority don't speak English as a first language. I'd worry they wouldn't make friends'

It depends on the mixture within the school. If there are dozens of languages and cultures within the school, then English tends to be the language of communication and friendships aren't an issue. If the school is something of a monoculture, then it can be difficult.
Taught at one school in London, 20+ languages spoken and friendships crossed all sorts of boundaries of language, culture and wealth.
Taught at another large school (not London) with two main languages spoken, neither of them English. That would have been a much harder school for a monolingual English speaker to make friendships in.

So yes, I'd move out of London and find somewhere I was happier in if I could.

The middle part of my post disappeared! It waffled on about how we did the same sequence of moves over the years, and now live in an area that we are all very happy about and we visit LOndon on a regular basis. Then we go home.

We left London for Scotland and I kick myself we didn't do it earlier! Within five minutes walk we have an excellent school, beach, swimming pool, soft play, trampolining, two parks. People lovely. 300k would get you a four bed ground floor tenement wih period fireplaces etc.

It's the best thing we ever did.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-47643121.html?premiumA=true

Lovely Holmes Chapel ... commutable to lots of areas, leafy, pretty and very Cheshire :)

I live near Bolton in the north west. Brilliant commuting into Liverpool, Manchester, or Preston. I love it and when the boys are older there is things for them to do. There's a lot of children's classes etc, but not possible for us at the moment

Move! I live in a quite pretty market town up north, 3 bed detached house on nice street next to fields, and my house is worth 150k which doubt would buy me a room in London. Yes of course we have some crime, drugs etc, but at very low levels.

Ds is in Y1 and is one of about 10% of kids with English as a first language in his inner London school. However the majority of the kids spoke reasonable English when they started Reception and now pretty much all of them are fluent - and most of the parents speak at least some English and make efforts to come to birthday parties etc. Facebook groups for parents in the local area have helped build a real sense of community that hasn't always been there.

This is the most diverse area in the country though with over 60 languages used by pupils and most families pushing education for their kids even if they didn't have much. If the school was mostly one or two languages and not valuing education, it would be very different.

Though London is quite crowded enough so I usually encourage anyone who doesn't like it to leave!

For me simply taking away stress in your life for yourself and your family is vitally important.

We moved to a small town in North Yorkshire. Close to A1, Leeds and York. 4 bed detached house within walking distance of primary and high schools. Fabulous schools and community. So many things for the children to do. Small commute to work. No brainer.

Sitting in my nice village 4 bed detached house in the Midlands right now. Bought for 250k a few months ago so it's v do able. And the schools here are great.

I do hate it when London is slated as dirty, dangerous, unfriendly

And I hate when the rest of the country is slated as being a cultural desert. There are theatres, museums, parks and even diverse cultures outside of London.

Pipbin - I didn't say anything of the sort

I just said London's wonderful for the most part and doesn't deserve a blanket 'it's a terrible place to live' that it gets from some people.

There are also other wonderful cities and parts of the UK - you'd be pretty stupid to think otherwise.

In fairness you didn't, but others have.

Tbh I've only seen London bashing on this thread. People saying London's 'shit'. There are syringes everywhere, everyone gets mugged all the time. 99.9% of schools are full of kids can't speak English (although curiously London state schools do pretty well nationally). Apparently all 10 million of us are rude and 'they'd rather eat shit than live in London' (so eating shit is preferable to living in a penthouse overlooking Hyde Park?! :)

I've not seen anyone bashing anywhere else on this thread and tbh I've never known a long term Londoner slag off other parts of the country especially as we know we'll be immediately attacked. We can't win, if we say we love our city, we're told we think we're better than other places. If we try and move somewhere else, we're accused of inflating house prices!

I'm not bothered by those with tall poppy syndrome. If they don't like London stay away, nobody forces anybody to be here and we could do with less people anyway.

I've been all over the country and there are some stunning places that I sometimes daydream of living in and as much as London can sometimes piss me off I love it and can't imagine leaving.

Does it help if I say that I love London, but wouldn't want to live there again?
That I hated Manchester, found it grubby and aggressive and have no wish to revisit it, despite having lived nearby for years?

We've just moved from London to Devon
Pros: amazing what you can get for your money
Great schools, tons of stuff to do, low crime , infact all the things you would want
Cons: not much in the way of arts and culture but some nearby, I've found that I do quite miss the diversity , but on the whole a brilliant move