Advice Needed - Moving to Kent
 

Hello Friends,

I currently live in NY and moving to Kent to my company's office there. I have an option of renting a house in Maidstone or renting an apartment in Chatham Maritime. I dont have much idea about the neighborhoods. Any advice to make a decision would be much helpful. Any suggestions about other neighborhoods are welcome too :D

I am a single 32 yr old male and would like to live in a safe area which provides opportunities to me other single ppl.

Thanks,
Jimmy

Re: Advice Needed - Moving to Kent
 

If your company is the reason why you're moving, don't they have someone in the Kent side of the business who would be able to advise of areas that are suitable?
I'm sure there must be lots of folk on here who would know the area well, but I'm from the North and know nothing of Kent other than I think it's known as The Garden of England so therefore I can only assume parts of it must be beautiful ( unless of course it looks like my garden in which case it will be overgrown, have lots of dog poo that needs to be removed and be covered with weeds :) )

Re: Advice Needed - Moving to Kent
 

Maidstone is a nice commuter town, crime wont even come close to NY crime levels in either place, so quite frankly crime rates/safety shouldn't really factor into you choice.

Maidstone is nice, family orientated, direct link to London has bars, clubs and a good music scene from what i hear. Chatham Maritime, which is a rejuvenated port area. Looks rather drab and soulless to me. Gillingham which is near chatman is miserable. So it stands to reason so is chatham.

Re: Advice Needed - Moving to Kent
 

Thanks for the reply ElizabethK. I am sure I will hear from them too but I am doing my own research just to be sure :)

Re: Advice Needed - Moving to Kent
 

Thanks ldollard. Your advice was very helpful. I am going to stay away from Chatham then. Appreciate your response

Re: Advice Needed - Moving to Kent
 

Personally I'd stay away from Chatham. Not a very nice place IMHO. I don't know Maidstone town all that well either, but I do know the surrounding countryside and it is beautiful. I love Kent. Maidstone is a hop, skip and jump away from Ashford, making travel to Europe so easy.

Re: Advice Needed - Moving to Kent
 

I live in North West Kent which is a little different than North East and East Kent but I grew up in Dover so know the area pretty well. Maidstone seems fine. I agree with most people here - Chatham is pretty run down although in a few years time it will be great (thanks to Hollywood injecting money into it!) but for right now I would say Maidstone. Kent is beautiful. Really a lovely part of the country.

Re: Advice Needed - Moving to Kent
 

My Dad lives in Rainham, the Rainham, Chatham, Gillingham areas all seem to merge into one to a person visiting the area;) (me anyway). Some parts look less desirable, but I wouldn't say its all miserable.

Re: Advice Needed - Moving to Kent
 

I lived in Maidstone for 15 years and my mum lives in Brompton (5 minute walk from Chatham Maritime)

We are moving back to the UK and looked at Medway Towns, Maidstone, Ashford and Folkestone as I know them all well. In the end, we chose West Sussex as the school system in Kent is failing and we have 2 young children. The other reason is the number of 'chavs' in Kent, something that we have been fortunate to avoid in the last 7 years here in the US :)

One plus about Chatham Maritime or St Marys island area is its actually quite nice, rejuvenated docklands with great views of the Medway. Upnor has a nice castle and a cool little high street with some nice pubs. You are also right on the new link road for the M2 and easy reach of London / Dartford Tunnel etc and the shopping malls at Lakeside and Bluewater. The downside is that the town center is awful and you would be shopping alongside smoking teenage mums pushing their babies around whilst swearing like troopers and arguing with their boyfirends.

Maidstone is a strange place. Some nice new shopping area development there too, but it is a soul-less place that only comes alive on a weekend when its night club party central. It has an aura of self importance with many of its residents thinking its the center of the universe. Housing is expensive and many of the nice areas have some bad council estates / rough areas right next to them. A bit overpriced and overrated for what you get IMO although Id rather live there than the Medway Towns.

Wheres your office?

Re: Advice Needed - Moving to Kent
 

I was wondering the same thing after all these response posts.

I think that you are giving Kent a bit of a bad rap for the chav-central Medway towns and all of those you have listed, when there are many others where the education system is not failing because mostly the town's economic predicament is not the same, so typically neither is the population. These would be places such as Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells, Canterbury (for the most part), Faversham (for the most part), Broadstairs, Sandwich and Deal, even Dartford (for the most part) all of which have good to very good, even top-national (in Tonbridge) state schools in the area. Hence the "Wheres your office" question is very pertinent though unfortunately Tonbridge is the only real candidate close enough in to the Maidstone area if indeed it is HQ Maidstone.

All that said, I own in Canterbury and the potential for chav culture impacting me there is indeed a concern, cosmopolitan/multi-cultural though it is, with a huge student population.

Re: Advice Needed - Moving to Kent
 

Thanks for the response everybody.

My office is in Gillingham to which Chatham is pretty close I believe but Maidstone isnt too far away either.

Re: Advice Needed - Moving to Kent
 

If I were in your shoes and turning down the offer of an apartment/place in Chatham and Maidstone was not really too big a deal, I would choose to live in Faversham which is just 20 mins away by train.

Re: Advice Needed - Moving to Kent
 

Faversham is nice. Love the town centre.

Re: Advice Needed - Moving to Kent
 

Hi Pete, yes, Tunbridge Wells is lovely and I lived and worked in Canterbury. I had a house in Lower Chantry Lane and had to put up with drunken chavs banging on the front door, shouting and fighting on their way back home to Sturry after an evenings drinking in the pubs. Bit of a shame because the city is gorgeous.

Anyway, we hired an educational consultant to help us with finding schools as we were having a hard time. She commented that Medway authority was the worst she had ever dealt with, totally unhelpful. Part of her conclusions on Kent were that the Grammar schools are good or better in the main, although the regular schools are not. Only 20% get into Grammar, so Kent is a gamble. If you get in great, if you dont, you are screwed. Kent is one of the worst areas in the country for the number of schools failing to get good or outstanding ratings from OFSTED with asimilar average house price, salary etc.

That kind of sums Kent up for us. It has excellent areas, but overall its not 'value for money' like some outher counties. Thats why we chose West Sussex in the end.

Re: Advice Needed - Moving to Kent
 

Thanks for that detail, very helpful.

I must admit that it is the quality of the grammar schools that I was really referring to. As expats, when weighing education standards overseas with the UK because we are looking to return with kids, I suppose it is typical to aim high, so I only looked at the best grammar schools to justify a return, otherwise I might as well stay put at the secondary level since private schools are well beyond my financial scope these days.

Somebody else said that Sturry was a haven of troublesome/disorderly types, it must be the council estates on the Sturry Road??