Move to Hastings with young children?

[genxyz]

Does anyone out there know Hastings/St Leonards well? Would you move there with young children? Can children brought up there thrive despite the deprivation?

• Is it a safe place to bring up children? Will they encounter problems or be unsafe out and about once they are a bit older and start going out/socialising by themselves?
• Will there be enough like-minded children for them to make friends with?

We're in Brighton at the moment, from London. We love theatre, literature, the arts, London & its energy, being connected, Europe, the sea. Obviously Brighton is great for all those things, but we'd like more space and a change.
We have several young children for whom we have reasonably high academic expectations, who are full of plans and life and ambitions. We really want to know whether we'd find plenty of educated, cultured, connected peeps who could be friends with us and our children, and most importantly whether our children would be safe there.
Thx for any thoughts.

I was there for 35 years, & lived on a big council estate, as a child. Maybe its o.k if your income is good and you can fill your spare time doing nice things.

Bikerlou you obviously have a very different experience to me. I regularly walk home from places in the evening. DS walks the short distance to school with his friend. We moved from a dull Boden-clad white middle class enclave to set up business in Hastings which is very successful. DS loves his school and I think he benefits from socialising with a wider range of peers. We are concerned about schools and that is the let down of the place. OP the catholic schools in the area are great and there are some options for secondary schools further out in battle and robertsbridge. Our friends all have children who are doing very well, DS has a huge range of activities from art to sport and everyone is enjoying watching their house equity increase nicely. Experiences of a place are different but because yours sounds unpleasant don't extrapolate that across the board.

*Today 17:47 genxyz

Thanks Jellybeans and curtains. I guess some people are trying to bring up their children well there, but perhaps the deprivation is too much.*

Plenty of us are managing very well thanks

Fairylea and khaleesi, it is utterly beautiful and quirky too. Perfect in those regards. I grew up in inner Birmingham and we had deprivation and no sea views although some quinoa. ;-)
Khaleesi, I know what you mean about Brighton.

I am sorry Hairspray, I didn't mean to be rude, I was just trying to be polite to the previous posters as they'd had problems in Hastings.

Hastings really isn't that much different to Brighton. It is definitely on the up (just look at the rising house prices, percentage-wise rising substantially more than in many other areas) and has a thriving arts scene. Yes it has its rough places, but don't most towns? I'm baffled that anyone thinks it's that much different to Brighton tbh.

That's why I thought, Blackbird. Just much smaller.

Very deprived, very rough, very very run down You could say the same thing about many areas of Brighton and London! Personally I have lived in Brighton, Eastbourne and Hastings and I would say Brighton is the most rough of all three. I saw far more drunks, homelessness, drugs, and crime there in the 4 years that I lived there than I did in 8 years of living in Hastings. I suppose it depends what areas you go to though!

Pier is beautiful and new. Jerwood gallery is lovely and new. Amazing restaurants, shops and cafes in the Old Town.

New town centre I suppose some people would refer to as "chavvy" but this is just snobbery as it's really not bad, Priory Meadow is not an old dilapidated shopping centre, I've always liked the fact the car park seems clean and not dingy.

Seafront is less polished than Eastbourne but not much different from Brighton in terms of the seafront hotels needing a lick of paint etc.

East and West Hill both lovely. Hastings Country Park really lovely.

Myself and all my friends at school were academically bright and went to an average state school in Hastings, we all went on to do well at various universities. Some kids in the same classes as us went on to have teenage pregnancies etc but these were kids who were unfortunately from disadvantaged backgrounds to begin with.

I never witnessed any crime in Hastings but I didn't tend to walk through dodgy areas etc.

My only slight complaint is that there is slightly less to do in Hastings than other main towns along the coast, in terms of leisure facilities and so on. When I was a teenager my social life revolved around going to friends houses, going to the cinema, beach days in the summer, and sometimes wandering around town. Occasionally we'd all get the train up to London or Brighton for a more exciting day out.

I still miss living in Hastings and would love to live there again if there were any jobs there in DH's and my field. It has more character and heart than most towns round here.

Mamuschka, just what I wanted to hear! I think it's absolutely beautiful. I hear what you're saying about activities for children. Brighton is packed with them. But then there's the overcrowding as the price to pay.

Hi genxyz

We moved to St Lens 2 years ago from Brighton, and from East London 3 years prior to that. We love it! It definitely has its pros and cons but doesn’t everywhere?! If I’m honest I still don't feel quite as settled as I did in Brighton (yet!), so I completely understand your hesitations, but I have mainly personal reasons: Having had the initial excitement about moving out of London and being by the sea whilst pregnant and then having my DD there I very easily then found an incredible group of like minded Mamas and we went through everything together in the early days so the bond was strong. Without a doubt I would say this was the hardest thing to leave, and probably quite unique to Brighton's demographic. But after 3 really bad experiences with rental places the desire (need) to build a solid base for ourselves meant we started to look further along the coast. For what we could afford in deepest Portslade/ Fishergate, 20 mins from the sea and 40mins from the city centre we were able to buy a family home in SL 7 mins from the sea and ridiculously close to the station for when my DH needs to commute. For us the decision was simple- our day to day life is spent on the beach and in the different woodlands in every direction (much broader spectrum of outside adventures over this way) and the space our new home has provided us with still feels like such a privilege. A much better quality of life that a BN postcode was ever going to afford us, regardless of the chequered past of the street we live on.

It definitely took slightly longer to find like minded friends – after a few failed conversations at playgroups I quickly learnt to keep my opinions to myself, but there are loads of families with the same values (and even a few that have begun to think differently since beginning such discussions) once you look a bit deeper. Although it upsets me that most of them are DFLs (down from London) or AFBs (across from Brighton), I am comfortable enough in my middle class skin to know I’m not being a snob wanting to feed my child good food, fill her mind with adventure, and fight for a better kind of politics.

There is a wider divide between the locals and the outsiders here than anywhere I have ever lived, and that definitely has a lot to do with deprivation, but I combat that by just being as kind and polite to everyone as I can be (and keeping my “new age” thinking to myself in certain situations).

The coast line is windier- my only bug bare, but it still offers low tide fun, warm day swimming, picnics by the sea, and a view of the horizon every day. And it’s still a huge draw to all our London friends looking to get out of the city for the weekend. The new Pier is an incredible space (if you look beyond the awful fairground rides) for everyone, old and young, as is the new skate park for the older kids- we’ve seen a huge reduction in bored youths hanging out in the kids playpark since it was completed in the summer and a new energy amongst them.

As for culture, there are some really interesting people here, and you find that most have something really creative going on- you need to because local work of other kinds is hard to come by. The Jerwood is a fabulous gallery- hosting some well renowned exhibitions, not forgetting the De la Warr in Bexhill (top notch). There is a book club in London Borough Wines (their only branch outside of London)- not that I have made it, as I have childcare issues when my DH is away, but lots of my friends go and I am told it is fabulous. We have an independent cinema in St Lens, in the beautifully restored original cinema of the area, there are more music gigs than you could fill a year with- totally depends what you are looking for, and in the summer there seems to be a festival celebrating one thing or another every weekend!

I don't think Hastings will ever be the "new Brighton", nor does it want or need to be, and it certainly isn't "Hackney on Sea", as some media headlines would have you believe- it is just a fabulous town with people from every walk of life living here. There is definitely huge gentrification happening in specific areas but there are also lots of initiatives to hopefully ensure it is not at the expense of the local diversity. I, for one, am hoping that we are not the root cause of the next generation being priced out of their homes as we have been by pop up cupcake shops and corporate take over lawyers (but being able to buy a decent coffee locally has certainly improved things). It definitely seems to have a higher per capita (visible) presence of addicts of every kind than Brighton, but I also live next to rehabilitation centre and we get nothing but pleasantries as my DD and I walk by. The town centre is completely lack lustre, but I am also imagining that you don't spend a lot of time hanging around West St/ Churchill Sq- every town has crap bits, it's just that we haven't quite got as many not-crap bits (yet). You get used to having to be a bit more organised/ creative with shopping for/ making presents whilst trying to support every new venture as they pop up (like rabbits). What it lacks in interesting larger retailers it also makes up for with a much greater mix of quirky independents than most identikit High Streets (Btown included). In fact, when we told Brighton friends we were moving here the born n bred said Hastings/ SL is how "Brighton/ Hove used to be- before it got chi chi”

The clincher, and I totally agree it’s a big one, schools- My DD is 4 next month and we are in the midst of applying for schools- the reason, in fact, I came across this thread. It has been incredibly tough, made tougher by my absolute refusal to send her to a religiously affiliated (no matter how "not that religious") school. We have a few local schools to consider but in reality I think we are going to do everything in our power to send her to a tiny independent school in Bexhill. It is possible this decision would have been slightly easier had we still been in Brighton, but perhaps not, as the failings (I feel) of the current State system and affects of greater testing/ Academisation/ teaching shortages etc are national. The competition for the best schools is even greater there than it is here. I had loads of friends who didn't get even their third choice and were having to commute miles with their older children when we there.

Sorry for the long post but it sounds like we are travelling quite similar paths. Lots of Hastings/ SL is entirely safe, well educated, cultured and windy. I am definitely one of those people “trying to bring up their children well" here, along with countless others, and for us the deprivation hasn’t been a factor so far (although I acknowledge we are probably going to make the tough decision of financing at least our DDs early years education). But it will always come down to personal choice.

Good luck with the decision, and let me know if you do decide to make the move- we're a welcoming bunch! x