Is Fareham a good place to bring up a family? Any experiences of Cams Hill School?

[ClaireD1987]

Hi there,

We are considering moving to the Fareham area. We are looking for an area which has enough to do for a young family, whilst offering a safe environment for our family to explore.

Would you say that Fareham is the right place to bring up a young family? Is it a safe, family friendly environment?

We have 3 children, one fast approaching secondary school age. 😬😵‍💫

Also, does anyone have any experience of Cams Hill School in the area?

Any experience of any aspect of educational, school culture, behavioural e.t.c would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

There are some good points to Fareham mainly the road out. The town centre is a dump full of empty shops , the only main high street shop clinging on is Boots the chemist and a tiny branch of Next . It's going to get hugely congested over the next few years due to the 6000 new homes wellbourne development aswell as multiple other developments. Difficult / impossible to get a doctors appointment and no NHS dentists . There is a lot more anti social behaviour with kids and never leave their bikes unattended or they'll be stolen , particularly at the train station . The whole infrastructure is collapsing.
Positives are there are a lot of things to do locally , the beach is 10 mins , woods the same. Being close to a motorway means easy access to anywhere . There are a lot of community projects / groups offering services / support / help and a lot of families .
In a nutshell if you don't have the money to buy somewhere better it's probably not the worst option but not somewhere I'd choose to live . The villages on the outskirts are far nicer but they are all being built on so in 20 yrs south Hampshire will be nothing but a mass of concrete with no services or amenities.

I’d drive another 10 minutes to Southsea depending on your budget.

Southsea is lovely and right by the sea, but I'd add that a lot of properties there don't come with gardens or parking and unless you work in Southsea it can be an absolute pain to commute from (only two routes in/out).

Fareham town shopping centre is definitely feeling more run down these days, but then in my experience this is true of a lot of high streets, not just Fareham. Access to sea and countryside is good as the previous poster mentioned. It might be helpful OP to know what your budget would be as then people might be better placed to advise?

Yes don’t go to Fareham. At least go out to somewhere nearby a little less crap - Lee on Solent, Wickham, Hamble, a bit further and Southsea. Unless you actively like places completely lacking in soul 😊

Fareham is quite a depressed area, also crime on the increase.

Wickham is nice, though expensive. Whitely isn't too bad, good shops and cinema, things for kids to do and nicer area though quite toy towny. Locks Heath has some attractive houses and a Waitrose, with some pleasant nature areas around.

There’s a lovely library, nice leisure centre (with a good soft play) and a big sainsburys. The high street I think is no worse than many ans there’s a few useful shops in the shopping centre. There is regeneration around the fernham hall and with the new welbourne estate. I used to be local (not local enough to know the schools) and honestly always thought Fareham was a lot nicer than my friends seemed to!