Our big move

[fayeako]

Me, my husband and 9 year old daughter are going to be making our big move from Manchester to the South in a few months. We were hoping we could get some advice on schools, where is good to live etc. We will be working in Kingston so wanted to base ourselves close by. Any advice would be massively appreciated.

Hello, we've shared your post on our Facebook page, so you'll hopefully receive feedback shortly:

www.facebook.com/MumsnetKingston

Good luck with the plans

Local Editor

I think it depends on your budget. Kingston is cheaper than lots of London, but still expensive, especially in comparison to Manchester prices. Probably slightly cheaper than Didsbury, but not much. We moved to Kingston in the summer (incidentally, I am from Manchester, hence why this caught my eye) but there are many nice areas that we just cannot afford. We had to settle for a nice house in a bit of a hole... If I had the choice, I'd live in North Kingston; probably somewhere near Park Road.

With regards to schools, if you look on Kingston Council's website, you can see which schools are massively oversubscribed- it shows the distance that last year's admissions allowed, and some are only a few hundred metres.

I think if you gave an idea of budget it would help. I live in surbiton, but grew up in Kingston so know the area well. Surbiton is great. It has lots of little events going on (like today's seething festival) great transport links, good schools and I much prefer it to Kingston.