Trying to find somewhere to live with a good commute to both London and Brighton??

[Nicoleholder]

I’m hoping someone can help us with our move decision! My partner works in Tottenham Court Road and has lived in London his entire life, I am from Brighton and all my friends and family are there. We’ve been living in Kew for the last 2 years with out little one who’s nearly 2 now and are wanting to move.
I want to be closer to my friends and family in Brighton, as we are very isolated where we are right now but we also need to be within a decent commute to central London!
We both love everything that London has to offer and my partner isn’t wanting to move as far south as Brighton!
We’ve been looking at Hayward’s Heath as an option but getting very mixed opinions on whether it’s a nice place to live/ bring up children.
Any advice on other locations or if anyone lives in Hayward’s Heath for the commute has anything they can share we would really appreciate it!

Just bumping this thread for you, @Nicoleholder hopefully someone will be along soon with some advice.

Do you want to be on a direct trainline to Brighton? If not Horsham might be worth looking at. Direct train to London, easy ish drive to Brighton.
Reigate is nice, but similar set up with trains / drive.

Stations on direct route to London and Brighton, around Three Bridges might be ok. I’ve not heard any opinions about Hayward’s Heath which suggests it might be a bit bland.

You can commute to London Bridge or Victoria, three trains an hour. Brighton is 20 minutes. West side of HH has wealthier housing than the East, there are several good primary schools, two secondaries or 3 if you are catholic, and the 6th form college is reopening.
So what are people telling you are the negatives?

Three Bridges is definitely the nicer side of Crawley. What do your Brighton friends suggest?