Nurse commutes from Wales to London after being ‘pushed out’ of the city

Stephen Price

A nurse has told the BBC she was ‘pushed out of London’ so moved to Wales to commute to the city while pregnant.

In an article from the BBC’s Meghan Owen, Lauren Stanley and Megan Davies, titled ‘I couldn’t afford rent in London as a nurse so I commuted from Wales while pregnant‘, the correspondents investigate the rise in nurses relocating from London – a rise which is greater than all of England

The article leads with Georgie Scott, an A&E nurse moved out of London during the pandemic, who told the BBC that two thirds of her wage was previously going on rent and ‘it wasn’t feasible’ for her.

According to the article, after looking at different areas, Georgie and her partner made the decision to move to Wales, finding rents were “less than half of what we were paying in London for bigger properties”.

Amy, who now lives in a village near Port Talbot, shared: “I would say I spent two thirds of my monthly wage on rent.”

After discovering that rents were “half the price” in Wales, she decided it was where she wanted to live. Then, for four months while pregnant, she commuted four hours to London to work – bunching her shifts into blocks to make the journey more feasible.

She shared: “We started looking at the Welsh market and we very quickly found properties that we liked that were definitely within our budget.”

To combat the exodus of employees such as Georgie, London Mayor, Sir Sadiq Khan has launched a plan to start at least 6,000 rent-controlled Key Worker Living Rent homes in the city by 2030.

The article states: “New homes will be let at rents based on 40% of key workers’ average net household incomes – saving those with a two-bedroom home about £7,000 a year on average, according to City Hall.”

Deputy mayor of London for housing, Tom Copley, told the BBC: “We know many of the Londoners we rely on to keep our city moving do struggle to afford market rents, let alone buying a property. And won’t qualify for social rent.”

He said Key Worker Living Rent would vary by borough and would “balance affordability with deliverability”.

Knock-on effect

A Sunday Telegraph article has highlighted a record high in migrants from England moving to other parts of the UK amid cost of living struggles – with Wales seeing the most dramatic increase – pushing up rents and waiting lists for Welsh renters as well as property prices in areas seeing higher levels of inward migration.

The rise is has also led to tensions over increased house building to meet the needs of a shifting populace, and the impact on local services.

Discussing data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), Economics Reporter, Melissa Lawford, shared that net migration out of England to other nations in the UK ‘soared by 53pc’ in the year to June 2023 to hit 31,393.

Wales has seen the most dramatic increase in migration from England, with a 65% increase year on year to 17, 559 – again, a record high save for 2020, standing in stark contrast to the net outflow seen a decade ago.

Using data from Centre for Cities from 2022, Lawson explained that “people are most likely to move to Wales when they are student age; when they are in their early 30s; and aged between 55 and 64”.

This data comes as official data showed the largest rise in the UK population on record since 1971 – figures Lawson says ‘masks a major internal movement within the UK population’.

Read the article from the BBC in full here.

Watch a clip featuring Amy here.