Moving to Greater Manchester

[Dani0817]

Hi! My family of 3 DH, DD (will be 2 when we move) and myself will be moving to greater manchester area march 2014. I have never been to the UK. I am currently a SAHM, but I'd like to start working after the move... Any recommendations for good areas to live near heywood? I am not from USA I have been living here for nearly 8 years but I am originally from South America. All comments, tips, advise, is welcome

Hi, I live in Grtr Manchester, so happy to help :-)
Parts of Rochdale are nice, Milnrow and Newhey. Depending on how far you want to be from Heywood you could also look at Saddleworth, which is lovely (that's where we live tho so I'm biased !)

Hi animaniacs! Thanks for your imput i will look into the areas you mentioned. Do you work? I'm confused how nurseries work in the UK, does the employer pay for portion of it? My plan is to get a part time job like during the afternoon so my husband can watch dd while I work... What is the weather like? And is public transportation pretty reliable ?

Hi,

I'm on maternity leave at the moment but I will be going back to work in a month or so.

Regarding nurseries, generally the employer will not pay for this. However there are childcare voucher schemes offered by many employers (via the government), whereby you sacrifice a portion of your salary to pay towards childcare (the benefit being that it's taxfree)....I get confused by it to be honest so I can't explain it very well, sorry! If you google it you will probably get more info on it, or your DHs employer should be able to give you the info if they take part in the scheme (assume you're moving for work?).
Good nurseries are fairly expensive :-(
But, children over 3 get 15 hrs per week of free childcare (before they go to school).
Sorry if I'm not explaining very well, my DS is only 9 months so I'm only just starting to navigate the nursery/childcare/what's available stuff!

The weather can be variable...areas like Oldham and Saddleworth are typically 2 or 3 degrees colder that the city centre because we're higher up! We can get quite a lot of rain too. But we've also had a great summer (not sure how it would compare to S.American standards tho!)

In general, public transport is decent (ish), but depends on what area you decide to live in. If you will be reliant on public transport, I would suggest you look at areas close to main roads/bus routes, or the Metrolink.

Do a search on here and you'll get my old thread of moving here from a few years ago. Lots of very helpful MNers came to my aid, and many are RL friends now.

Happy to help where I can. SW Manchester/Cheshire here.