Leaving London - is there a promised land?

[ilkleymoorbartat]

With the mass exodus from London at the moment, aibu to ask whether there is some promised land that people go when they have kids (whatever the location).

Ie, are those of us in London missing out on a life that is lovely and idyllic which if you're in the London bubble it's impossible to imagine?

Do we have Stockholm syndrome basically?!

I live in suburban south east London. No one I know is leaving. However, most people who live here were born in London / Kent borders so this is likely impacted by closeness to families etc. Suburban life may be perceived as dull but we have a nice terraced home and large garden, the kids school is around the corner and we have easy access into central London for events / activities. That said, I often ponder moving somewhere else but always talk myself out of it!

OP my DC were in primary, in London, in the noughties. In DS's year by Y6 there were 4 of the original intake left. In DD's 5. DC either transferred to the independent sector from about 7 and or parents moved out if that wasn't an option.

I’m in zone 6 and have loads of amenities plus fresh air and a house and a garden and a few tube stations and rail lines to get into central London within 30 minutes for anything else.

Where are you? I'm in 2/3 & my door to door journey often takes around 30 mins.

We lived in London for a few years, moved out for work reasons, I'd love to go back for a few more years eventually. I love London, love the vibe, the transport, everything going on, but as public sector workers the cost just isn't worth it. We live in the midlands now in a 1600sqft detached house with garden and country views and we paid £350k for it, excellent schools. I just couldn't downgrade our house for a "vibe" because our jobs pay about the same wherever we are.

DH and I plan to rent out our home and maybe rent in London for a few years post kids (as they should be out our house by our mid 40s....) because I haven't got it out my system yet.

I left. I'm a born and bred Londoner, and was dead set on staying put (all my family and friends are here) as I'm a very proud Londoner. After we had our first DD, we realised how unaffordable it would be to live anywhere near our preferred areas, so I begrudgingly agreed to look at houses in Essex (my family come here a lot).

Although it's a different life style, I now love it. We have bought a house with many bedrooms and a massive garden that costs 2/3 of our tiny dark London flat's rent, and childcare is about half the price. It's perfect for bringing up small kids.

Bath. Most of my friendship group here moved from London. Pattern is move to London in your twenties work hard play hard find someone to marry move out when first kid a baby or alternatively stay in London for good. Pros and cons to both.

These threads always make me 🙄everytime ,there is one ,posters will pop up saying they moved out of London , into the middle of no where ,and now can't wait to go back to London for the vibrant life ,as though the UK consists of London and anywhere outside of London is just a vast waste land,and then accuse non Londoners of being parochial.

awaketoosoon

I think what people find hard to get their head round is if you move out and are near a mainline train station then it is so much quicker coming into London than to get from one bit of London to another.
Watford to Euston is 21 minutes even Rochester to Stratford is only 29 minutes
St Albans to Kings Cross is 22 minutes

It all depends on where you need to get to and where you live.
Dh could get into his job door to door quicker than some who were coming from one London Postcode to another

Nothing I have read on here has convinced me I would prefer to live outside London. I can’t imagine I would ever feel at home anywhere else. Sometimes the rife crime aspect spooks me, but in general, day to day, I feel part of a lovely community and enjoy the diversity and endless entertainment. I also think schools are good.

Nothing new in this. My children were born in the early 90s. My husband and I had taken it for granted that once we had children we would move out of inner London to the outskirts of London or somewhere in the Home Counties in commuting range, or possibly somewhere else in the UK altogether. Our reasons were schools, crime, pollution, wanting somewhere more leafy.

However, once we started thinking about it, we realised there was a huge amount we'd miss if we left London. We also found out that our kneejerk assumption that inner London schools were poor was wrong. Provision was patchy but there were some terrific schools there (and my impression is there are far more now than back then). As we explored our local area at the weekends, we realised it was actually very green - lots of parks and open spaces. Also, we recoiled from the idea of spending a lot of time and money on commuting and living in a dull suburb like the ones where we'd both grown up. We wanted our children to grow up somewhere more diverse. We also didn't want to end up reliant on a car to get around.

In the end we moved to a nicer house nearer the park and in the catchment of a good primary school. My husband could be at work in 25 minutes door to door and that made a huge difference to how much time he could spend with the children (and me - I was a SAHM back then). Still in that house, children now late 20s, still living in this area, no regrets from any of us.

Brighton or Hove. The work life balance is so much better than London. Evenings and weekends can be spend swimming, paddle boarding, walking in the Downs.

We have a beach hut which is perfect for hanging out on summer days / evenings. We use it for entertaining friends, picnics, evening drinks.

So much for kids. Lots of seafront cafes, two seafront playgrounds with paddling pools. Lovely parks. Beach volleyball.

Loads for adults too. Great restaurants, theatre, comedy, quirky pubs, the lanes for shopping.

You can be in London in an hour.

There are downsides. Namely problems with homelessness and drugs, but nowhere is perfect.

We left London after 20 years. It was decided pre-Covid and lockdown, but we left mid last year. We lived right in the centre of London, hipster area, and both of us walked to work and to school. It was - and is - a brilliant city and I do miss it and we had loads of local friends. Very vibrant, mixed community. Tiny house and yard, so it was a squash and a squeeze.

But we had three boys and there were issues with violence and open drug dealing on our street. Secondary school options for boys round us were either single sex (the TOP public schools, brutal exam regimes and £££) or pretty terrifying comps with metal detectors, and no sibling policy anywhere. Three kids at three schools was the norm round us. We were both working silly hours too.

Last straw was coming home to find a police woman pulling a roll of Police incident tape round our railings. A 14 yo boy had been stabbed and collapsed bleeding on our doorstep (he was ok). We didn’t want to do a commute after such convenience and we had no links to the Home Counties, so it was stay or do the whole hog move. New jobs, new schools, new house etc. We decided to go nearer family and find a vibrant town we could walk to school and work again. Didn’t want to be rural and car dependent. Don’t regret it, and DH and the boys LOVE their new school and job and lifestyle. I’ll be honest and say I’ll am not quite settled. Don’t feel I have my network yet. It’s a beautiful city, no school worries, we have a bigger house and lovely garden.

London is fabulous if you have enough space, a garden and are able to access excellent schools.

We stayed but had we not been able to educate the dc privately, we would have left. In our Borough there was not one single school offering three sciences, a choice of MFL or a classical language. DD stayed at primary until Y6 - we were able only to put two schools on the secondary application form: one in Westminster and one in Hammersmith & Fulham - both with onerous cofe selection criteria.

We have moved from South London to Birmingham to be closer to family. We are in a wonderful leafy area, fantastic schools and the house prices are far more affordable - whilst this is an expensive area for Birmingham, those selling in London are ideally placed to buy here.

Fast trains down to London if needed and even faster when HS2 comes in obviously.

And no I’m not an estate agent but aware I sound like one! Just over the moon with our decision to move.

Well, plenty seem to be coming to our commuter area in Sussex. Most of the young families here were already people who had moved out of London, but over the past year, properties often seek before hitting the market and I don’t know of a single one that has my gone to London families. The village primary school is suddenly full to bursting, and estate agents are canvassing is almost daily to consider selling our property (for significantly more than it would have cost a year ago).

What’s with all the ‘rural and idyllic’ places? Manchester has lots of London escapees, including myself.

Went to uni in London but realised that I’d never be able to afford to enjoy it and save up to buy a decent house alone (I have no parental help at all). So I moved to Manchester.

Seeing the number of highly paid jobs available in my field makes me slightly regret it - but I still don’t want to live in London. A 2-day in office commute is the most I’d put up with..:

I used to live in London. I feel really sorry for people that live there and don't realise how much better it would/could be, somewhere else. I had a 1 bed dingy flat, in a very dangerous area. It took me ages to commute to work. And it's so expensive!

I initially moved to Shropshire, and bought a 4 bed detached house for just 10k more than the 1 bed flat.

I'm now in a seaside town, about 20 minutes from Edinburgh. I have a 5 bed house, with a lovely sea view. It only cost me £200k, whereas in London it would be over a Million quid. The local schools are outstanding. My kids both benefitted from free Uni. Our town, whilst small (10,000 people), has all that you need, we have Aldi, Asda, Tesco, Dominos, Subway, Co-op, Indian, Chinese, Chippy, a sailing club, tennis courts, bowls, children's play parks, 4 amazing restaurants, one actually turns in to a club like venue at the weekend. There is a community hub that arranges group walks, Gala days etc. Everyone seems to know everyone. We have 5 beaches of white sand. Lots of woodland for dog walking.

And, if you want something more racy, just hop on the train in to Edinburgh and you have the whole city just 20 minutes away. Or, you can get to South Queensferry in 10 minutes - very old and quaint own, with loads of seafront bars and restaurants, and boat trips that offer day time trips along the Forth and night time Jazz cruise or Disco cruise etc.

Oh and there's virtually no crime here either.

Where did you move to @ChrisQuean it you don't mind me asking? We're you east London previously?

@BrimfulOfBaba

Sheffield feels like a really overlooked option. I was born and raised in London and left very reluctantly when I turned 30. Almost immediately I felt like a calmer person. The people are laid back, a good mix of countryside and city, and you can travel so easily to London and other cities.

The only problem is if I fancy a specific cuisine it might not be readily available. Please make the most of that in London (or Manchester. Or Liverpool. Etc)

I grew up in London for 23 years then bought in Hampshire. This is exactly how I feel! The only thing I miss are different cuisines and especially East London beigels. However, my children are toddlers so they’re happy with a play park… But even if they did wish they were a tube journey into central like I grew up, I’m not sure I’d be thrilled about the idea of them going there (of course crime was a bit less when I was a teen).

Like a PP said, moving out was like a visible relaxing! Now I live on a small cul de sac with families who all look out for each other.

You do have to be able and willing to drive though 😁

As a pp said if you love living in London, just stay! It’s not like any other city in the UK as it’s more like a collection of villages. But it has so much going for it if you’re at that stage on your life.

We moved to Leeds three weeks ago.

We have a huge house with an enormous garden, opposite a park but a six-minute walk from Headingley. Lovely neighbours who have lived here for decades. We couldn’t be happier.

Don't do it. We did 5 years ago and I regret it. There's no going back - we swapped a 2 bed flat for a 4 bed house, how could we ever contemplate doing the reverse?

I live in a rural market town that was featured in the Guardian some years ago. Ever since then there has been a constant stream of families moving here from London. They are known as DFLs or ‘Down from London’ to the locals. Every few days there is someone on the local Facebook page posting along the lines of “we have just moved here from London, can anyone recommend a good place for x, y, z”. We purchased our house 5 years ago for £270k. 2 years later a family from London moved in a few doors down - identical house - bought there’s for £380k. The house prices have sky rocketed and all of a sudden people are finding it really difficult to get their children into their preferred primary school. If I were to sell my house now I’m confident we could easily sell it for £100k more than what we purchased it for. My main concern is the affordability of the housing for young people and first time buyers. My children will find it hard to buy local now if they choose to. There’s a massive drive to build extra housing in the area but at the expensive of tarmacking over vast swathes of green land including areas where the local children play. Am I resentful about it. Yes and so are most of the other local people.

Leeds, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bristol, Liverpool

All good cities, but all small/very small in international terms. So none compare directly to the London experience.

Edinburgh sounds fantastic!

I moved out of London about 20 years ago to a gorgeous seaside town in Kent.
We are near a city, Canterbury, for good shopping and theatre. We have the Turner Centre in Margate for art.
The DCs are at a great grammar school and enjoy everything that life by the sea has to offer.

That said, we live in a small town which can come with a small town mentality. Generally, there isn’t much diversity here although there is more at their school.
I would love them to spread their wings when they leave school and enjoy life in a big city in their 20s.