Where to live one hour commute Safron Walton or Potters bar

[Sheldonsheher]

I am considering moving back to near my work rather than get a new job after five years. Seems they don’t have to honour an agreement to wfh long term despite paperwork.
Two primary school kids. Need to be around one hour from east London max. Does anyone have experience of Potters Bar or Safron Waldon? They seem ok on paper but are they nice? State school only. Needs to be safe as child as one child Send

Saffron Walden is very nice and safe. Can’t comment on the schools in detail as don’t know them.
quite expensive.

Saffron Walden is lovely and has good schools but very expensive. The train station is quite a long way from the town. I’d have a look at other places along that train line too. I don’t know anything about potters bar though.

How are they for teenagers?

Saffron Walden is nice though it’s not cheap. What age is your child? And what are their needs like? Some people rate SWCHS which is the secondary school but alot of people who have children with send have had issues there. It very much depends on your child. Primary schools I’ve heard are good (mine went through primary a while ago but there’s a mums Facebook group and this question comes up a lot and the comments are all pretty positive).

Audley end is the nearest train station but is outside of the town and it wouldn’t be walkable.

But my teens have been relatively happy here. It’s an easy train ride into London Liverpool Street.

How expensive is verr expensive, my budget is around 900k? Is this reasonable. Prefer a 4+ .

Hi OP. We’re in the process of moving to Saffron Walden from north London, partly for the schools. We’ve sold our house but are still looking for something suitable in SW - there’s much less coming on the market there than here and there seems to be a particular lack of family houses within our price bracket of around £700K-£900K (plenty at the cheaper or more expensive end, although ‘good’ houses seem to be almost as pricey as in our current London suburb).

While SW schools are pretty much universally good, bear in mind that primary places are very much at a premium. We haven’t actively looked for DD as we don’t have an address yet, but anecdotally and from all the research I’ve done most if not all of the town schools are full. We’ve factored this into our finances and if it came to it we could probably stretch to paying for the local prep school, Dame Bradbury’s - failing that it would probably be a place at a far-flung village school. For secondary, SWCHS has an excellent reputation, although as other posters have said it’s possibly a less good option for any additional needs.

We live just down the road from Potters Bar and I much prefer SW - it has a lot more charm and feels like it has a distinct identity, rather than being a dormitory suburb of London. We love the market and all the individual shops - butchers, bakers, fishmongers and a lovely indie bookshop and it feels safe and very walkable.

Also worth looking along the train line into Liverpool Street: Bishop’s Stortford (which we also looked at), Sawbridgeworth, Broxbourne…

Good schools in Bishop’s Stortford and Broxbourne in particular, but more built up/suburban/busier than Saffron Walden.

Thanks what happens if the schools are oversubscribed in Safron Walden. Don’t they have to give you a place. Where would you be sent?

Potters Bar is very much a commuter town. It has 2 streets with shops on and no real focal point. Its not on the right trainline for East London either.
Saffron Walden is lovely but if proximity to a train station is vital for you, you will need to figure in driving and parking costs. There are plenty of other towns with better town centres than PB and good communication links, how about Bishop's Stortford?

I don’t need to be near the train. Is bishop stortford nice ? on the map it looks surrounded with motorway and airports?

how do these places compare to Brentwood and shenfield / ingastone?

The council is obliged to find you a school place, but it could be anywhere - so potentially a school in a village quite far outside Saffron Walden. We found the situation was similar in Bishop’s Stortford, as both locations have recently been very in demand for families moving out of London (complete contrast to where we are now, where schools are emptying out and there’s a lot of anxiety about future school closures).

This is why we’ve factored in the fallback option of a prep school, but we only have the one DD so a bit more logistical and financial flexibility.

Not sure about the situation in Potters Bar, but this site displays school vacancies across the whole of Hertfordshire so will give you a general idea: https://www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/services/schools-and-education/school-admissions/in-year-admissions-change-schools-during-the-year/school-vacancies/vacancies-in-hertfordshire-schools.aspx

Bishop’s Stortford we found to be quite busy, built up and traffic clogged compared to Saffron Walden. I think it had a quaint market town vibe back in the day but has had a huge amount of new housing built (without the accompanying infrastructure) and is now basically a slightly cheaper dormitory town for London.

The main draws are the good schools, the transport links and the attractive surrounding countryside/villages.

Any thoughts on Brentwood/ingastone/shenfield? For children is it safe or a bit roudy for nightlife?

Saffron Walden traffic is terrible. They’re building quite a lot of new houses and there’s a new development being built by the leisure centre.

If you don’t get into a town school, you’d likely need to look at a village school. There’s quite a few that comes up as being recommended such as Ashdon and Debden.

So saffron Walden is being built up too? That’s so sad.

I thought that might be the case I’ve been living up north so I’m not looking forward to going back to the rat race heavy traffic areas. Also so expensive.

It is getting a bit more built up, but I think it’s all relative; we are moving from an outer London suburb where almost every single patch of green belt land is earmarked for some kind of development, and the surrounding (Herts and Essex) towns and villages are being sucked into the creeping urban sprawl. A town planner friend of ours is despairing at what’s happening to some of the previously lovely villages on the fringes of our patch of London.

Compared with this SW is still relatively unaffected, especially as most areas of the existing town lie within conservation areas. There will undoubtedly be more building in the area as it’s close to the planned Oxford-Cambridge corridor, but at least this is aimed at creating more quality science/tech/AI jobs which should hopefully boost the local economy - rather than just housing estates for the sake of housing estates.

Are SW Schools any good for send ?

Compared to some areas Saffron Walden doesn’t feel built up. I think it’s only if you’ve lived here a long time, you see how much development there has been with not as much infrastructure.

@Sheldonsheher, primary or secondary? It would hugely depend on your child’s needs. Mine have aged out of primary but RAB used to be good for SEND and Katherine Semar is spoken about in favourable terms. SWCHS is a good secondary but again have heard mixed reviews in terms of send. But if you have an EHCP for primary there’s Churchill in Haverhill that I’ve heard about which teaches a mainstream curriculum but is a specialist provision and significantly smaller. They take from age 8 up to 16 and do GCSEs. Or you’ve got the asd hub at Passmore at Harlow and I think there might be one at Castle Manor in Haverhill.

The south is so expensive compared to a lot of the north. We moved back from Yorkshire due to having family in the area. But Saffron Walden is a nice town. You can still get into London easily (though the station is not in town). You could also look at Newport and Great Chesterford as they both have train lines.

Thanks I will probably drive the m11 not going to central London

kids primary but will be high school soon. One has send and is in mainstream school here which is very nurturing and inclusive.

I’d recommend joining Saffron Walden residents and Saffron Walden mummies on Facebook. There was a post recently on the mummies group about Sen schools.