Want to avoid nastiness

[helenna05]

Hi!
Looking to relocate from north to the south/south east or west.
However I'm really worried that over time the seeming awfulness of London gangs/deprivation and scally behaviour is going to spread out and rot away at the areas around there.
I don't want my baby to grow up around deprivation, gangs and what I see as the nastiest type of human behaviour.
Where can we move in the south that will as much as possible avoid the grossness? I just don't want to be exposed to that kind of stuff, it bleaks me out. I want my son to grow up in a safe place.
Please don't use this message to make a point about me being stuck up or whatever, only genuine advice please.

[quote MyCatHatesOtherCats]Bishops Stortford in Hertfordshire is a nice town. Good road connections to London, Cambridge and Braintree/Colchester. Good bus links to Harlow, Stansted Airport and some surrounding areas but you would need a car to get the most out of the area. Your budget wouldn’t go that far but you could get a small 3 bed like this. Excellent schools. Lots of towns like this in Herts.

I’m not saying you’d never ever run into trouble, especially as a teenager, but East Herts is one of the safest areas in the country.

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/76505123#/

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/88583311#/[/quote]
Thanks! Bishop Stortford looks great and in a good distance for family too! Thanks for your help :-)

Why is that wrong?!
You want me to explain again what is wrong with your tone? Sorry, I don't have that much time on my hands.

@helenna05

I can assure you Bedford is not grim

Instead of wide sweeping statements ( and I know Leeds very well, and they have areas with issues) I suggest you actually visit the areas concerned and take a good look then, getting the feel for the place yourself

But your money isn’t going to get you a lot

I'm not sure "the south" and the area that encompasses, is any more dangerous than "the north" There is a link between deprivation and crime, and there are plenty of deprived areas in the north as well as the south.
It is undeniable that London has problems with knife crime and gangs...but there are also areas of London with low levels of crime. I dont make an assumption of how safe "the North" is, based on the paedophile gangs in Rotherham.

By the way think it is entirely reasonable to want to bring up children in an area that is pleasant to live, and more importantly safe, but I can see why people would be defensive from the first post.

I do actually agree with you that some places are on a downward spiral. But I suppose there's places like that all over the country.

I have moved from the south I have to say where I grew up certainly has got more crime and is alot more run down than it was when I were a child.
More stabbings drugs and crime.

I was careful about where I chose when we moved out of the south, I went by crime rates and how looked after the area was, location was really important.
I don't think there's anything wrong in wanting a nice safe place to live obviously, you just could of worded it better OP.

My friend lives in South Couldson, fairly sure he's not in a gang or every been stabbed....does that help?

Omg YES I KNOW YOU CANT ESCAPE IT.
But some areas are tougher than others!

I don't know how to put this in a way that makes sense to you.

You seem convinced the risk is higher in cities and lower in small towns and that is not the case.

@unmarkedbythat

Omg YES I KNOW YOU CANT ESCAPE IT. But some areas are tougher than others!

I don't know how to put this in a way that makes sense to you.

You seem convinced the risk is higher in cities and lower in small towns and that is not the case.

When did I ever say that?!

Not getting involved in all the toing and froing on here, but if you google the indices of multiple deprivation map, you will be able to see crime levels/health/employment etc down to a very local level.

I'd try and find people who have teenagers who live in the area - I worked on a mental health ward in a place which would have met your criteria (but is north so wouldn't iyswim) and there were significant problems with recreational drug use in teenagers and that was compared to the nearby "rougher" city, in the same demographics.

Different areas have different issues. In my experience, things like stabbings and muggings are more of a city problem (sweeping generalisations - but someone was shot on my road in London and nothing like that has ever happened in my current small town).

I live in a small town. Things like burglaries are a much bigger problem here than in the gritty, up-and-coming area of London. Also things like county lines and drugs. Not a massive problem and there was more anti-social behaviour in London than here. It’s a safe town with a low crime rate. But those things are problems.

I grew up elsewhere in the country, & after 20 years in London, am getting a bit sick of the constant low-level anti-social behaviour (fly tipping, drugs, noisy parties, illegal driving manouvrers, rudeness) - just things I didn't grow up around. So I'd say your concerns are not unfounded

Your budget is very tiny for London so you'd be living in a 2 bed flat in an awful area, forget about it!

Have you thought about Cambs - commutable for London if you need to, right sort of direction for Norfolk, I have friends who live in Royston & they are really happy there.

Also, would you rent for a few months to get to know an area?

St Neots may suit you.

Your OP and some of your subsequent answers have really rubbed people up the wrong way - for good reason I'd say - why couldn't you have said 'I'm looking for somewhere nice and middle-class with low crime' rather than slagging off London?

But getting back to your question, if you only have a budget of £375k (and I say 'only' in terms of property prices in the south) and you already live in the north, then in your position I'd stay in that part of the country. You'll get so much more for your money. Can you not ask friends/colleagues where their friends and wider families live that is 'nice' and base your search in those areas? Your budget in the south-east won't go far at all, unless you do want to buy in a less desirable area such as the Hatfield/Welwyn area or some of the areas you would consider 'gross'.

Saffron Walden is also very nice with excellent schools.

My god there’s also nothing wrong with Hatfield/Welwyn!!! I used to work for two millionaire families that lived in beautiful houses in Welwyn Garden City and their children went to local private schools.

I honestly think what most of you are missing is whether you would be moving into a deprived area in any place, as that’s what’s going to make the difference. It’s not the area per se.

I could travel a few miles down the road and find a deprived area of council/housing association houses. We all know they exist even though no one wants to talk about it. In many places this is then surrounded by a mix of privately owned/privately rented houses - all different sizes. You’ll have a local school close to said council estate that will be a school that many of those local children go to. The middle class kids won’t go to it because it will have a ‘bad reputation’ due to the behaviour of the kids that go there. So Its a self perpetuating cycle of able children being taken out or never setting foot, less able children being the main demographic and then that school becomes the dumping ground for the unruly kids locally as it has spaces.

It’s not that any area is ‘bad’. It depends where you can afford to live in any area and that’s why people are recommending you choose somewhere where a budget of £360k will get you a better location.

My god there’s also nothing wrong with Hatfield/Welwyn!!! I used to work for two millionaire families that lived in beautiful houses in Welwyn Garden City and their children went to local private schools.

Ha your post made me laugh. I grew up not too far from there and the Welwyn/Hatfield area is mostly NOT filled with millionaires that send their children to private schools! Normal working/lower middle-class families that send their kids to the local comp is more typical. But I don't think there is anything really massively wrong with the area - but from the OP's OP I think they would! I just said it was less desirable..

@CeibaTree

My god there’s also nothing wrong with Hatfield/Welwyn!!! I used to work for two millionaire families that lived in beautiful houses in Welwyn Garden City and their children went to local private schools.

Ha your post made me laugh. I grew up not too far from there and the Welwyn/Hatfield area is mostly NOT filled with millionaires that send their children to private schools! Normal working/lower middle-class families that send their kids to the local comp is more typical. But I don't think there is anything really massively wrong with the area - but from the OP's OP I think they would! I just said it was less desirable..

Well I used to travel extensively through all sorts of meandering rural roads in the area that were full of fucking great houses. So whilst it might not be the majority, it’s certainly not exclusively a crap area.

I think most of this is snobbery.

I actually like Welwyn but, having looked on Rightmove, she’s priced out of it by at least £50k.

I live on the Herts/Bucks border, in outer suburbia to NW London. My town is pretty safe with low levels of serious crime, as are other local towns such as Amersham, Beaconsfield and St Albans.

But, as all these places have train links to London, property prices are high. A four bedroom semi in our town is around £800k, a detached 4 bed £1-1.5 million upwards. Beaconsfield is even more expensive.

As with many better off areas, there are burglaries and car thefts. A fair few of my kids' school friends have been mugged at knife point going on the tube to school or to see their friends. Another friend's 15 year old was stabbed outside a party at someone's parents' house. I think drug dealing is fairly common in our wider area.

I'm less worried about the crime than the traffic though. Congestion is awful and will deteriorate further with the new housing targets that have to be met by local authorities. I suspect that large areas of our green belt will be built on in the next 5-10 years as, certainly in our town, housing targets cannot be met otherwise.

A friend lives in Norwich and absolutely loves it. Nice city atmosphere and near to the beaches.

What Ive learnt about London since being on Mumsnet is that they are so fiercely defensive of it and will fight its corner to the end. I find it weird. Who cares if she doesn’t like it? How can that possibly have rattled peoples cages so much

People don’t like generalisations based on uninformed prejudice.
And it isn’t necessarily defensiveness to react negatively to such opinions.

Of course Londoners know that there are outbreaks of crime in London.

But we also know that it is a huge area of millions and millions of people, the vast majority of whom are perfectly ordinary families with lovely kids going about their lives in a civilised and constructive way, and not impacted by the crime that goes on. Most (not all) of the crime is contained within the gangs themselves. My life in a non leafy part of S London is not impacted at all.

Had the Op stated her budget and asked for a family friendly area, she would have received lots of friendly encouraging responses.

Had she simply said ‘South, but I don’t see us living in London and we probably can’t afford it’ she would have simply got good ideas for towns.

Starting with negative factors about any area or region N,S,E or W is never a good way to engage people when asking for help.

Are your family still in Luton? If so Berkshire might be a good one to look at. Most of it is on the M4 so easy access to Luton, and there are some lovely quiet areas

If you currently live in Leeds and you move to Huntingdon, your child will think they have moved to the most boring place on earth. And possibly so will you.

And if you move to Norfolk to be closer to your family in Luton, you should probably have stayed in Leeds. Norfolk is a looong loong way from anywhere.

There are loads of places around Bedford in your budget that are not grim. They are also not exciting and you will definitely need a car, and expect to be Mum's taxi until your children leave home.

You really need to be more specific. I live 10-15 minutes away from where all of those stabbings were over the weekend but it’s a totally different area and very naice, middle class etc but you can’t afford it with that budget anyway. What you need to understand about London is how diverse it is. You’ll find multi million pound houses next to run down council estates all over London.

You’ve also been recommended Brighton which you also can’t afford and while it looks lovely on the surface, has a horrendous drug problem like most U.K. seaside towns so I think you need to do a bit more research of your own and at least settle on a smaller area than “the south”