Anyone moving out of London when both parents commuting to work?

[bluejet]

Hi all

We’re considering a move out of London for secondary education. What troubles us is the fact that both of us commute to Central London (City and Marylebone) so need to stay close to train station. We’ve looked at many places including those shown in the most recent Hamptons research www.hamptons.co.uk/thelondonroadshow/ but couldnt find a place where life around the train station is as quiet and spacious as we would want when moving out of London.

We currently live in an outer London borough within walking distance to tube station but very quiet and spacious property so to move away from such amenities when both commute is so difficult. The only driving concern is secondary schools for the children as where we live the non faith options are horrendous (well below average scores across all measures). Places we’ve looked at:

St Albans - very attractive town but very busy, properties around stations are tiny
All Surrey towns - terrible South West Railway service. Can work for one person commuting but both would be impossible. Low chance of improvement in near future as bottlenecks around Clapham Junction
Tonbridge/Chelmsford/Reading - same as St Albans, plus extremely competitive grammar schools which we’re against

Has anyone moved out and both commute to work? Where would be the best place to move to?

Leaning on Hertfordshire as no grammar schools and reasonable rail services (or not enough bad publicity)

We live in one of the villages surrounding Bishops Stortford. The schools are great and we both love the life we have now having moved out from East London. However I'm in the process of looking to move to a local job as both commuting with demanding jobs since having my second child has led to far too much stress on family life with drop off and pick up for wrap around care. Both our careers have suffered in the short term.

When we moved out of zone 3 I looked everywhere in hope of moving out of London to a nice market town.

We both work full time but even if it were 1 of us i dont feel it would be fair for that parent to suffer more than 1hr-ish door-to-door commute (not the "under an hour" train times often quoted) - we are both utterly exhausted with the daily grind of drop off/pick ups + 1hr commute each way... I don't know how everyone else does it

I still look on rightmove because I have the same issue as OP - kids in lovely primary but the local secondaries are, yikes. I can never find anything, either out of budget, or not much more house or garden for the money in the home counties.

I too have settled in suburbia in SE london zone 5 which has its pros and cons. It's a 15 min drive to country park/nearby villages and the likes for weekend walks so very happy for now.

I have no family so could move anywhere in theory, so I guess I'll worry about secondary schools when the time comes?

We both commute, it’s not fun but not impossible. We have two cars and share the parenting on school days, one of us goes in and comes back early. Helps if you can work from home sometimes.

I can recommend Bushey. Watford Junction is a mile away, 20 mins to London. Great choice of schools and a good selection of properties.

If you do decide to stay in London, there's a useful tool I used to figure out which areas would support the two different commutes we had in our household (Liverpool Street and Baker Street). You can input your budget, commute, and lifestyle (e.g. schools, supermarkets, parks, etc) needs, and it matches you to the best areas/properties. It doesn't really have much outside Zone 4 at the moment though so YMMV if you're looking for places further out!