Good areas within commuting distance to London?

adelight

Sorry if I missed this, but exactly what city or county is home? I know you say West Coast Main Line but that covers a lot of places

St Albans is nice but it's expensive (something to do with the schools I think) and the season ticket is ~£4k. Depending on how much you earn it might be worth considering the price of your season ticket.
Amersham, Chesham, Chorley Wood etc are lovely areas, have cheap-ish houses and have tube stations so the season ticket is ~£2k. It's a short train/bus/drive to Chiltern line stations. Buckinghamshire in general is reasonably priced and the season tickets are ~£4k.
MK and Luton (season tickets ~£5k) are good but the nicer places to live are further from the stations so you have to consider that in your journey time.
Essex and Kent are cheap, nice places but I think they might make your journey home really long.

I was in a similar position recently so PM if you want more details about any of these places.

jebervic

Croxley Green and Rickmansworth are both Nice.

Errata

Plenty of places in the Cotswolds are circa an hour by train from central London, and should also be an easy trip to your friends and relatives in the north west.

Okydoky25

Stevenage/Hitchin or further afield but more for you money is Downham Market

lostinrates

barbarawright wrote: »

I don't understand why you are expected to move? Surely where you live has nothing to do with your employers? How can they force you? Is it in your contract that you have to live where they tell you? I'm sure we all know people who commute huge distances - the employers don't care as long as they get to work on time. I work in central London and have several colleagues who live on the coast, for example.

Depends on the job. If for example your job involves keeping essential infrastructure running, you need to be able to get there quickly in case of emergency else a large chunk of the population grind to a halt. Some medical situations require similar, at least in private practise where a smaller staff mean in emergency you might be needed. Some security services certainly used to have reatrictions (can you imagine, sorry, i know there is a terrorist threat and i am meant to be one of the front line on this and i will be there as soon as possible but i live two hours away). In our case its a corporate restriction. Dh is on duty 24/7 and frankly could do 50-90 percent of his work from home, but the percentage he needs to be on the spot for, he needs to be on the spot there and then, delay could cost millions if not billions of work for his employers. As a reult of a very hectic work schedul that results he is often in the office til well after the tubes run and is taxi'd home. Paying for this to within the m25 zone (a faiprly standard limit given) is affordable for his empoyers at his salary point, paying for it to our home would be expensive to say the least, and ultimately mean i guess a knock on wages acroos the firm.

Tropez

lostinrates wrote: »

I would address this differently. I would find out where the appropriate london station for the proposed relocation is and work out which direction to go in from there. The daily slog to london is going to be a bigger impact than the trips home imo.

The other thing is this 'hour' buisiness. Normally you get geographical limits...e.g. Ours is m25 (hence no daily commute for us) and not time ones. This is obvious, because an hour. Can be taken to cross london within zone two at times, even using tube. (there are many times i have accepted it would have been quicker to walk myself were i fit and able. So imo its an unfair guidance to give you. This is relevant both if its for short notice attendance (meetings, crises or unforeseen events, or whether its to do with out of hours transport provision,..e.g. Taxis after the tube stops)

Working out which is the appropriate mainluine station will help, because that will let you get 'as far away' within the hour. E.g. From our direction few trains go into waterloo, more into paddington, so extra time needs to be considered to get into the City fropm Paddington...where as both are 'London' the extra time can be considerable.

Yes, I can see the station being important. Currently, the London office is within a reasonable walking distance of King's Cross, which my admittedly feeble knowledge of London's geography tells me is reasonably close to Euston?

However, I have visited that office before and I have to say that I'm not convinced the space is available to take on the amount of workers that would be joining from my current office, even allowing for an expectation that 40% would decide not to stay on at the company so that they didn't have to move. Therefore, it stands to reason that the London office itself could be relocated, although an educated guess would tell me they wouldn't move far, simply because of the desire to remain close to St Pancras International.

As for the "one hour" guidance that is what is being floated right now. I would assume that when they have a better idea of whether they will proceed with their malevolent plans they would come up with something rather more concrete and less vague, although I also made the assumption once that my boss would know that Kilmarnock wasn't in Ireland and suffice to say I was wrong about that.

Not many people have the opportunity to get it as 'right' as relocators do, so looking now, and considering connections is absolutely in your favour for making a good choice.

My partner has labelled me the worst person in the world to plan a holiday with because apparently I take the planning part a little too far due to preferring to know everything about everything before I go. That's largely why I am looking at this now, even though they still have to perform the feasibility studies and research whether it is actually worthwhile and so it could never happen. As you say, I'd prefer to get it right.

barbarawright wrote: »

I don't understand why you are expected to move? Surely where you live has nothing to do with your employers? How can they force you? Is it in your contract that you have to live where they tell you? I'm sure we all know people who commute huge distances - the employers don't care as long as they get to work on time. I work in central London and have several colleagues who live on the coast, for example.

There has always been an expectation that an employee would remain within a "reasonable" commuting distance of the office. In part this is due to the nature of the business and how unforeseen and uncontrollable events can have a drastic effect on how we operate and there is consequently a need for employees to be within easy reach should a "situation" occur. Yes, they do like to make it sound as if we work for the CIA.

If I decided not to go and could not convince them otherwise they would most likely offer me voluntary redundancy. Where I live, the jobs available range from the awful to the non existent so it would be in my interests to remain within what they deem to be a reasonable distance so as to continue working. While in my area there aren't a high number of people with the skills to do my job I can only imagine one of the fifteen trillion people inhabiting London could.

PaddyPaws wrote: »

I relocated from Lancashire 12 years ago for work to an office based in Milton Keynes. Although based in MK I have spent a lot of time working in client offices in London and it's an easy commute from here (most trains take approx 45 mins - some are quicker, a few stop at all stations so take just over an hour).

MK is also on the west coast main line, I can catch the 6:22am train and be at my daughter's in Preston, Lancashire in time to walk my grandchildren to school.

If you don't fancy MK itself there are many villages around here to choose from if you want to be a bit more rural but with easy access to the mainline train from here

(I laughed at the thought of moving to MK, having lived here for 12 years now I love it)

HTH
PP

Ah, Milton Keynes. I was on a National Express coach once to Milton Keynes. We had just stopped off at some services and MK was the next destination. I was listening to some music and daydreaming when it suddenly struck me that MK seemed a lot more busy and urban than I imagined. I was surprised by the fact that I could see some very large towers and I didn't know MK had a large river running through it... and then I saw Big Ben and realised the fool of a coach driver had chosen to completely ignore MK and drive us all straight to London.

Not sure why I shared that with you but it is one of those reflective mornings.

Being on the WCML is certainly a plus for Milton Keynes. I shall have to add it to my list of places to research.

Thank you for your help!

Tropez

gingin wrote: »

I'm in Cambridge and OH commutes into central London, it's a 52 minute train journey, plus tube. Im a Home Counties girl so know a fair few areas around the M25 ringroad pretty well and none of those towns appealed - I find it dull, overpriced suburbia (sorry for my bluntness) and wanted the safe, friendly, green, active city feel that we have in Cambridge. There is just so much to do here for all ages. Downsides are house prices and the availability of housing, it's a very tight, frustrating market and the season ticket prices I think are over £5k now. The villages are nice and cheaper if you want space.

Previously we lived in St Albans, it did very little for me, the shops aren't great, the nighlife is poor, housing is expensive and small. Plus points are the commute into London is very easy and there are some nice country pubs in the outer villages. We tried Hertford too and we were gone after 9 months - just awful. I have family in St Neots, as mentioned before and that's reasonable house prices wise and you'll get the detatched with a garden easier than any where else. Surrey might also be worth considering but harder to commute home to via Essex.

Bluntness is always welcome with me. Unless you chose to be blunt about how much I look like a cross between Tony Soprano and Fozzy Bear, in which case I'll be a little upset.

I hear what you're saying about small, expensive housing. Where I live, overall house prices are substantially lower than the south of England, so as you get farther south and realise just how much extra you have to pay for quite a bit less you start to begin getting quite perturbed. I had an opportunity to work in Europe once, not that long ago, and I couldn't believe some of the houses that were available in some countries for less and that were larger. I did read somewhere we have the lowest amount of living space in Europe, though.

I've never heard of St Neots, so I will add that to my list of places to actually find something out about! I hadn't considered Cambridge. I have some relatives down there, as it happens. It might be worth a perusal.

Thank you for your response!

duchy wrote: »

There's the newish rail link up from Kent into St Pancras a mere hop from Euston. Some of the towns and villages out that way might suit but a lot depends on where in London your company is planning to relocate to.

My knowledge of the south of England is so poor I actually forget Kent exists at times. It might be worth a look, if it has connections to St Pancras/Euston.

peachyprice wrote: »

Chelmsford and Epping yes, but Harlow? A nice area?

OP, it also depends where in London they're planning on moving to. It's no good moving to the east to say Chelmsford if they're off to the west. Equally, St.Albans is fine, but if they decide on say Canary Wharf you've then got to add on the extra time travelling from Euston to there. You could end up adding another hour to your commute if you choose the wrong side.

They really need to give you some indication of where in London they may move to before you can narrow it down, just 'London' is too vague.

That is indeed a fair point and one which I probably should have already covered.

Currently, the London offices are very close to King's Cross station, which as I mentioned in another reply my feeble knowledge of the geography of London tells me is near Euston and St Pancras Intl. I'm not convinced that they will stay there simply because I'm not convinced there's enough room to support further workers, unless they have some sort of hidden, underground lair a la the James Bond villain's they all clearly wish they were. However, even if they were to move their London offices they would almost certainly remain close to St Pancras International because of the Eurostar (and more so if the links to Germany become available as we have a major office in Frankfurt).

Tropez

adelight wrote: »

Sorry if I missed this, but exactly what city or county is home? I know you say West Coast Main Line but that covers a lot of places

St Albans is nice but it's expensive (something to do with the schools I think) and the season ticket is ~£4k. Depending on how much you earn it might be worth considering the price of your season ticket.
Amersham, Chesham, Chorley Wood etc are lovely areas, have cheap-ish houses and have tube stations so the season ticket is ~£2k. It's a short train/bus/drive to Chiltern line stations. Buckinghamshire in general is reasonably priced and the season tickets are ~£4k.
MK and Luton (season tickets ~£5k) are good but the nicer places to live are further from the stations so you have to consider that in your journey time.
Essex and Kent are cheap, nice places but I think they might make your journey home really long.

I was in a similar position recently so PM if you want more details about any of these places.

My home is in the southern reaches of the North West region, within an hour of Manchester Piccadilly.

Thank you for all the helpful advice. I'm not sure I will need a season ticket, unless they intend to change the way I do my job which actually wouldn't surprise me. Every reason to change something that is working fine as it is! However, it is useful to know these prices because if they do change things I don't want to get stung for £5k a year that I was not expecting, although I do believe the company would help out there.

I don't mind a "long" journey back home as I can always do some work on the train, or watch a movie on my laptop or something like that. I would, however, prefer not to spend a great deal of time hopping between trains and stations. The off-putting thing about St Albans for me was the 2-3 changes that added around an hour to the journey. I don't mind making one change but more than that and it would just become a hassle.

lostinrates wrote: »

Depends on the job. If for example your job involves keeping essential infrastructure running, you need to be able to get there quickly in case of emergency else a large chunk of the population grind to a halt. Some medical situations require similar, at least in private practise where a smaller staff mean in emergency you might be needed. Some security services certainly used to have reatrictions (can you imagine, sorry, i know there is a terrorist threat and i am meant to be one of the front line on this and i will be there as soon as possible but i live two hours away). In our case its a corporate restriction. Dh is on duty 24/7 and frankly could do 50-90 percent of his work from home, but the percentage he needs to be on the spot for, he needs to be on the spot there and then, delay could cost millions if not billions of work for his employers. As a reult of a very hectic work schedul that results he is often in the office til well after the tubes run and is taxi'd home. Paying for this to within the m25 zone (a faiprly standard limit given) is affordable for his empoyers at his salary point, paying for it to our home would be expensive to say the least, and ultimately mean i guess a knock on wages acroos the firm.

That is largely it. The nature of the business does mean that we have to be able to respond to emergency situations. The London Riots were a good example, as even myself, up in the north, had to work many extra hours during those few days although I will add I was still able to do it ALL from home!

And I suppose I have to consider the future as well. There are several career advancement opportunities within the company from my current position and although the company has a very thorough system of remote communications, such as video conferencing, if I were to obtain a higher level position while I may still be able to do a substantial amount of work from home, I would also likely need to be available to get to the office on a more regular basis and very possibly on much shorter notice.

Errata wrote: »

Plenty of places in the Cotswolds are circa an hour by train from central London, and should also be an easy trip to your friends and relatives in the north west.

I have to admit, I know nothing of the Cotswolds. I couldn't even point to them on a map. I would probably struggle to point to them on a map with "Cotswolds" labelled in a large, bold font.

Thanks for the suggestion though, somewhere else to learn about!

And thank you to everyone else who has taken the time to respond who I may not have replied directly to. I am adding all these places to the research list!

zcrat41

As my mum said - st Neots has got an m and s and a waitrose now so is coming up in the world. 30 mins from Cambridge for decent shopping and 40 mins to mk for your wcml trains.

Errata

I have to admit, I know nothing of the Cotswolds. I couldn't even point to them on a map. I would probably struggle to point to them on a map with "Cotswolds" labelled in a large, bold font.

Reading through some of your other responses, you seem to be severely geographically challenged and that may be quite a stumbling block for you trying to understand which places are commutable for you and which aren't