Relocating to Bristol - advice on neighbourhoods

[olive88]

I'm relocating from Glasgow to Bristol with my daughter (who's 9 going on 10) to start a new job in August. I could really do with some advice on where we should aim to live!

We'll rent initially but I'd like to buy somewhere in due course, so it'll need to be an area I can afford. My budget will be about £250K, so I've already ruled out Clifton, Southville, Redland and Montpelier. My job's in the Filton/Frenchay area, so ideally east or north Bristol, or at least not too far south. Priorities are a good, nurturing school; an interesting mix of people; a sense of community, and some green, leafy spaces. Also within the catchment area of a good secondary school (is Bristol Met the best state secondary??).

Alternatively I could aim for out of town, but don't want to end up in a commuter suburb with no real character of its own. A friend lives near Newport in Wales and is trying to tempt me there; clearly you get a lot more house for your money in Newport or Caerleon or even Chepstow, but I'm not sure about the commute.

I'd really appreciate your thoughts from a local perspective.

One thing to be aware of is that Bristol is a local authority/council as well as a city and some parts of area have a Bristol postal address and phone numbers but are in s different authority. These are South Gloucestershire; North Somerset;and Bath and North East Somerset (aka BANES). They aren't part of the counties of Somerset or Gloucestershire either. Each authority has it's own schools, education department and usual council services.
A lot could depend on how you're planning to commute and where exactly you're going to be working. Filton is the west of the M32 and Frenchay is to the east of it. I'd say Filton has better public transport links as there's railway stations at Abbey Wood and Parkway, as well as buses. Whereas there's only really buses on the frenchay side. Bristol does have a good cycle network (but it's a hilly city). If you drive expect to spend a lot of time in your car. It can take me anything from 40 minutes to nearly 2 hours to get from one end of the ring road (which isn't a ring yet!) to the other.

Look out towards Kingswood maybe? and look at South Glos schools