Where would you move outside London? £1.2m budget + excellent schools

[ponds12]

We’re considering moving out of London and would love recommendations. We have three children aged 6, 4 and 1 and a £1.2m budget for a family home.
Our priorities are:

• Excellent state schools our children currently attend an outstanding primary, so education is our biggest priority.
• A family-friendly community with lots of young families.
• Safe, peaceful and good access to green space.
• A 5-bedroom house with a decent garden, ideally significantly more for our money than we currently have in London.
• Commute to London within an hour.

We’ve looked at St Albans and Harpenden, and are also considering Welwyn Garden City, Chorleywood, Chalfont St Giles and Great Missenden.

Where would you recommend? Particularly interested in places where £1.2m buys a lovely family home, the schools are excellent and there’s a strong family community.
Would also love to hear from anyone who has made the move out of London — do you love it?

Goady AI post

West Malling, Otford / Eynsford / Sevenoaks, Farnborough (Kent), Tunbridge Wells

Wendover , Haddenham.

This. I can’t afford the 0.2m for a house.

Meanwhile - in the real world - £1.2m doesn’t go far in London.

If it was intended to be goady, the OP could have stated a £5m budget.

Hitchin/ Letchworth. Super commutes, amazing schools (esp Hitchin). Hate the Telegraph but if you have access this is about the area; https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/united-kingdom/hitchin-england-most-in-demand-town/

Surrey, Banstead, outskirts of High Wycombe like cookham, bourne end

Check out the Local Plans for any area you want to move to. Thanks to Angela Rayner and her top down formula for housebuilding there is a lot of development planned (+91,000 houses in Buckinghamshire by 2040 for example and majority of it in the North where it’s not an AONB / Green Belt). Current villages are going to change to towns. Do your research.

I can’t stand it when people use AI for their posts. It feels so lazy and rude.

It's not the real world, it's an AI generated post!

Colchester - or one of the villages that skirt around it eg Dedham, East Bergholt.

Oxfordshire? Some excellent state schools (my kids go to them, one primary, one secondary) and great links to London (Oxford Parkway 45 mins, Didcot 45 mins).

This sounds great tbh

Winchester

Tonbridge/ Tunbridge Wells. Excellent schools . Decent 5 bedroom houses close to excellent primary schools and grammar schools.

Just because it’s AI and lazy, doesn’t mean it’s not real. Many people in London and the SE are buying houses circa £1m.

I live in Essex and if I had that budget I wouldn't be moving to Colchester!

Bookham Surrey

If you want something decent in some of the places suggested you’d need double your budget.

An hour commute door to door? You can struggle to get that in parts of London!

Maidenhead

You could get something fantastic in East Bergholt for £1.2 million though.

But I wouldn't want to live there, 1.2 million buys you into much nicer places with better schools, and better amenities. Your nearest town is still Colchester

Depends where in London you need to commute to - which mainline terminus would help.

Henley-on-Thames, it’s a yummy mummy magnet.