Should I move to Manchester from London?

Manchester is nice … But not greater Manchester … The people in the south are way more friendly.

COYL

After living in the Capital for 15 years, I got a job offer in Manchester in November 2015 and made the move

i actually chose to live in Glossop which is a good 30-minute train journey from Manchester Piccadilly.

I’m sorry to say but I don’t like Manchester. There are several reasons for that.

Firstly, you’ve probably heard how much iit rains in Manchester. It sure does. Winters are miserable with grey skies and sleet. Forget all those sunny winter days in the South-East. You’d be lucky to get one or two in a month. Summers are better but it still rains a lot!

Suburbs. Most Manchester suburbs are dispiriting. Ashton-under-Lyne snd Rochdale are quite something. Full of boarded up shops and visible poverty. I’ve never been to Oldham but apparently it’s worse.

There are much nicer suburbs in South Manchester such as Didsbury and ‘up and coming’ Chrolton. But personally I still prefer most London suburbs like Finchley.

Manchester City Centre does have some historic buildings but overall, just like most of Greater Manchester, it’s an architectual mess. You got the Arndale Centre which at least is a bit better inside. Parts of Deansgate are ok and nearby Spinningfields is the nearest thing to the City (of London).

Parts of Salford are said to be up and coming but not where I would choose to live.

The biggest problem in Manchester is homelessness. For the size of the place, it seems much more prominent than in London.

Transport is much cheaper than in the Capital but trams are slow and infrequent. Get used to that 12-minute wait.

Housing is much cheaper but salaries are equally lower. Having said that, £30k salary goes a long way but is exceptional rather than the norm.

Finally, people. I don’t think that the Northerners are any friendlier than the Southerners but that’s just my experiemce.

Personally, I would move back to London not only tomorrow but today if it was financially possible!

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Nice to hear an alternative view!

I haven’t been to Manchester since the 70s, so cant compare it to anything. Although the manager of the local Ford dealer did come out to me on a snowy Saturday morning to let me back into my locked Cortina :man_shrugging:

You’d probably notice a lot more homelessness in London now compared to 2017; that’s probably true of most big cities.

Good Luck!

It always makes me laugh when people perceive Manchester as being some sort of Northern yardstick… There’s about another 160 miles of England above it…and its about the same distance as the crow flies to London…in reality Manchester is almost bang in the centre of England.

I’ve had a look at a map. If you were to replace ‘England’ with ‘the UK’, then that would be more accurate. But it is some distance north of the central point of England.

Source: compared these locations with Manchester on a map.

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As someone who lived in Sheffield a long while but visited Manchester regularly, I can confirm the rain is a thing.

Hope you settle in, you can always come back to London if it doesn’t appeal (though I always wonder how many do. If it was me I would move further north eg Edinburgh over going back to London.)

If the place in Leicestershire is the “centre”, Berwick Upon Tweed is around 250 miles north of there… so as far as i’m concerned my original statement of “Manchester is ALMOST bang in the centre of England” isn’t too far wide of the mark bearing in mind its less than 100 miles from the apparent centre of England.

My original point was that there is a hell of a lot of England left that’s north of Manchester.

I’ve realised reading this thread I feel defensive for Manchester ha ha… I guess that means this is my rightful home and not to move London later in life lol !

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So how did it go eventually? How’s life in Manchester? Is the weather that bad? I’m asking because I’m in your same previous position, undecided if staying in London or moving to Manchester. I visited Manchester only once and for 3 days, last January, and I must admit I’ve been extremely lucky because although it was cold, it was absolutely sunny and lovely. Have I been just lucky or is the bad weather just a myth? :slight_smile:

For us it doesn’t feel like it rains often but I guess we are not comparing it to anything.

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I’d move anywhere other than London I hate the place. I’d rather live on the surface of the sun than in London.

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So we ended up moving near Cheadle - Stockport, about 8 miles from Manchester city centre. I can only tell from personal experience and IMO. Manchester is very small and sometimes seems a bit too small. My wife doesn’t drive and public transport is just not good. Buses are expensive and unreliable.

Yes. :cold_face:

You have been lucky. Bad weather is definitely not a Myth.

I don’t regret moving to the North because of people here. It’s much more friendly and we think it’s good for the family. We have also been able to save quite a bit more than in London. Housing cost is the main driver for that.
Give me a shout if you would like to know anything specific because we did quite a bit of thinking before our move.

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Welcome to the rest of the UK! :smiling_face:

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Congrats on the move to Manchester!

For anyone else interested in potentially making the move here’s an event I am attending about jobs and moving to Manchester, some big company names will be there too!

hope this helps!

So after 8 months after our move from London to Manchester, we have decided to go back to London by the end of this year.

There are several reasons, London felt like home and Manchester did not. We would have not realised if we would have not moved that how much we felt comfortable with our surroundings and life overall in London. We missed the diversity and multiculturalism of the big city.

Public transport is just not great and my family relied on that so much. We only realised after our move here.

London offers a lot more opportunities to grow in our jobs. Again didn’t expect this would be an as big difference as we experienced before our move.

Feels like it’s always raining here :neutral_face:

There are other personal preferences which we just would have not known before we experienced life in the North. Overall we learnt a lot and now we know where we want our little family to belong. We were saving about £500-£800 per month compared to where we lived in London but in the end, decided to choose ‘comfort’ over savings.

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I don’t know whether to congratulate or commiserate

Actually I think I’m just impressed by your clarity of thought and knowing yourselves well enough to be comfortable with changing your original decision and moving back. I feel that so many wouldn’t cope with that. I hope it’s all you hope for.

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Hope it all works out for you.

I find when people talk about liking the hustle and bustle of a big city I never really got what that meant, until we nearly moved to London.

I’m from a slow-paced kind of city and the urgency people have to get around in London, the stress, the worry is just totally lost on me. We couldn’t handle it, we didn’t want to pay for it and thus we still live in Hull. Yeah it’s colder, rains more, isn’t as nice to look at, nothing comes here show wise (although it is improving), our airport flies to pretty much nowhere but hey, I haven’t found anywhere I’d sooner live in the UK.

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But you do have white telephone kiosks, so it’s not all doom and gloom.

:wink:

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Thank you for being open and honest. This is something I hear all the time from friends who move up and within a year or two move back down.

Often they have an issue of pride, so they can’t just be open with why they move back, so this is refreshing.

While I do always say that these are the things that will likely bring (one) back to London from Manchester, I’ve learnt that you need to go and try it yourself to realise it fully.

Oh, and welcome home :slightly_smiling_face:

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