So many missed opportunities. When Mrs Antrobus died, she left Nightingale Farm to a distant cousin. She was a childless widow who had been very close to Roy and Hayley, and they had been very good to her. It would have been plausible for her to leave NF to them and for them to turn it into a day nursery. Hayley is a qualified nanny and Roy has a keen business brain (ahem). It would have solved their housing problem and given us a good, realistic storyline about a start up business which could have also been a perfectly natural place for lots of characters to meet and chat.
Emma was moderately bright at school but the SWs decided that she would do abysmally in her GCSEs in spite of a lot of last minute revision and then she would give up on school and have a series of dead end jobs. Even when she did a catering course it led to nothing very much.
Susan is not thick by any means and could have returned to vocational education as a mature student.
Fallon had a moderately promising career in the music business, not just as a performer, but also in production - she did some sort of course in that (HND?). This led to absolutely nothing for her, which is so frustrating. Why didn't they send her down to London and have her either become a silent character or commute? She could in the fullness of time have set up a recording studio in one of the business units or used Ambridge as a base for her freelance career.
Alice - just don't get me started. Of course she should have left Ambridge and its environs.
Lucy Perks - blood pressure now coming to the boil! Lucy was portrayed as bright and energetic all the way through school. She went off to university and then we got a report that she had failed her finals but it was all OK, she was getting married and going off to New Zealand. Why did they throw in the bit about her failing her finals? It was completely unnecessary to the story and not even remotely likely. Debbie throwing in the towel part-way through her degree many years earlier was just about credible - failing your finals and not bothering to re-take is not.
And breathe...