Hi conolly15. Thankyou for your reply. I am not really a 'live in the city' sort of person,but would like to be in the country within travelling distance of the city for work etc.. My husband is a heating plumbing engineer/builder,and i am a braser (like welding). I have looked on the jobs online,and there seems to be jobs available,but i wonder how many people would be going for the same job?! Also,as i said,we have animals (2 whippets,a cat and a parrot) and having looked at the rented accomodation online,i am concerned that we could find somewhere that accept pets. We are a very simple familly as to regards accomodation. We don't like posh house's,and having renovated a few house's here in France are not affraid to rough it a bit. We are keeping our house here in France as a safety net,until we can be well settled in Scotland. I would also like to hear from anyone that can tell me about the crime. Our daughter of 13 has never known anything except the French countryside to live in,and knows nothing of the dangers of outside our little world. Nothing AT ALL happens around here! Some may say it's a dream to live in such peace,but me and my husband are not getting any younger,and being well travelled before kids etc. feel like we are wasting our lives away! How we long for a take-away!
Sherry.
Hi Sherry,
As far as the animals go, you're right, you will find it more difficult to find rented housing that allows pets. The best thing to do is to negotiate with any particular landlord, and make it clear that you are responsible pet owners. Evidence of vaccinations, etc will help. The Landlord's only real concern is that the pets will destroy his property, so if you rent an unfurnished property you might have more luck with being allowed animals. There are a huge number of letting agencies in Edinburgh and also private landlords (on account of the huge number of students). Edinburgh also has a larger proportion of rented property vs privately owned than anywhere else in Scotland, so you will not have any shortage of availability. It'd probably be best if you made contact with some of the bigger Letting Agencies here in Edinburgh (DJ Alexander, Murray and Currie, Dove Davies & Partners, Edinburgh Letting Solutions, Albany Lettings, etc.) and have one of you fly up on a weekend and visit as many properties as possible with a camera. If you are looking to let outside of the city, like in Musselburgh or in Fife, I won't be much help as I've always lived in the city itself.
As for jobs, I'm not sure how the construction industry is doing at the moment. Certainly from a "walking the street" perspective there are a lot of stalled sites. That being said, the city is undergoing huge renovations at the moment with the installation of the tram network. As I'm sure you know, Scotland was hit particularly badly by the recession, and the recovery will be long and slow here because of Scotland's dependence on public sector jobs. Edinburgh has faired better than other areas of Scotland though. The JobCentre Plus website is a good one, but you're right, everyone uses that website to find work, and there is a lot of competition at the moment. If you have any private contacts in the industry in Edinburgh, that'd be the best way to go. Otherwise, you can arrange an appointment with a JobCentre when you arrive to meet with them and see what they can recommend. You'll need to get National Insurance Numbers from the JobCentre once you arrive anyway (unless you already have them). If you're British citizens you can also taking on Job Seekers Allowance benefits while seeking employment, which can be taken up by going into the nearest JobCentre.
As far as crime, I think the media blows it a little out of proportion. There are definitely areas of Edinburgh that I would not recommend a 13 year old girl go wandering through in the middle of the night, but the city is not so dangerous that you don't regularly see children walking or taking the bus to school unattended. As far as outside of the city, I wouldn't expect there to be much of a crime issue. Probably Scotland's biggest problem is alcohol abuse, and most crimes are related to that, so (obviously) as she won't be visiting the local watering holes I imagine she won't encounter anything too scary. The city does have a number of regulars at major street corners looking for money, and some of them can be aggressive. This is probably the only thing you might have to explain to her coming from the countryside. Also, remember, that Scotland is very far north and so it does get dark earlier here in the winter. By 4:30 pm in late January the sun is setting.