moving from Manchester to Isle of Wight

[mummy MT]

Hello I new on the forum and I would like to apologise if some has already posted this before.
I'm a mother of 3 boys aged 16, 13 and 3 and would like to move to Isle of Wight due to events that took place over the past few weeks. I would like a fresh start with my family and after searching for places in UK where to have a fresh start Isle of Wight came to mind. I have visited once on a day trip but really loved this island.
I have a few questions as I'm a student at present and this is going to be a big move for the family.
Which areas are family friendly in terms of housing schools and general living standards. I'm hoping to go to places where communicating to Portsmouth or nearby universities won't be a problem.
How are the standards of living for a family?
Is the housing affordable and are there social housing properties?

If there is more information that you could provide to help me with the move it would be greatly appreciated.

[2farapart]

Originally Posted by mummy MT

Hello I new on the forum and I would like to apologise if some has already posted this before.
I'm a mother of 3 boys aged 16, 13 and 3 and would like to move to Isle of Wight due to events that took place over the past few weeks. I would like a fresh start with my family and after searching for places in UK where to have a fresh start Isle of Wight came to mind. I have visited once on a day trip but really loved this island.
I have a few questions as I'm a student at present and this is going to be a big move for the family.
Which areas are family friendly in terms of housing schools and general living standards. I'm hoping to go to places where communicating to Portsmouth or nearby universities won't be a problem.
How are the standards of living for a family?
Is the housing affordable and are there social housing properties?

If there is more information that you could provide to help me with the move it would be greatly appreciated.

The Isle Of Wight is beautiful, unpolluted, very scenic and peaceful. Employment is determined by the island's predisposition towards tourism (and is rather scarce) but crime is insignificant. The population has a large bias towards retired people (likely people who don't need extensive mainland trips nor employment) and not a place I would have coined for students. That said, I knew many fellow travellers who would commute from IOW to London, but that's no easy journey and is rather dependent on availablity of ferry operations (weather dependent). Of course, ferries are carefully timed to leave moments before your train arrives in Portsmouth Harbour! It was a frequent issue that a ferry would not wait for a delayed train on the return evening commute, leaving people in the dark of winter waiting for the next.

The Solent is a relatively calm stretch of water separating the IOW from mainland Britain (offering crossings to Portsmouth and Southampton, both of which have connecting rail services direct to London). The calmness of the sea there means that the ferries/catameran can offer a pretty reliable service (on average, services get suspended due to weather maybe a couple of time of year). Cost used to be a problem, with the Solent bearing the dubious accollade of being the world's most expensive water crossing (based on per mile cost) but looking at current WightLink/Red Funnel prices, they're actually cheaper now than they were 20 years ago when I lived that way.

Social housing is very limited but house prices are very reasonable (at least they are comparable with cheaper areas of the UK), probably due to the fact that it's not a place that is practical for people who spend a lot of time on the mainland. One consideration is journey time. Buses are decent but slow, so you could spend 20-30 mins on the bus, if using the catermaran you catch a short train ride from Ryde Esplanade to the pier-head, then you have a water-crossing that is 20 minutes by catermaran or 30-40 mins by ferry. So anywhere you would regularly travel to on the mainland will around an hour's commute added each way (add to this potential waiting-time for each service).