When Charlotte Cowell left Darwen, Lancashire, at age 16, she didn’t plan to come back – let alone buy the house she’d grown up in.
“I was very glad to leave Darwen,” she says. “I’m generation X, and at the time it felt like there was nothing there.”
Cowell, now 51, eventually settled in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, where she lived with her partner, Denre Bruins, for 22 years.
“Whenever I came back [to Darwen], I just found it depressing,” she says. “Coming from the relatively sunny, affluent South, it felt heavy, dark and grim.”
But as her parents grew older, and following a health scare of her own, Cowell’s priorities began to shift. She dreamed of owning a house with land and more money to spend on the things she enjoys.
At a Bruce Springsteen concert in 2023, she had a kind of epiphany: “He did this song called ‘Death to My Hometown’, and I started crying. I thought: I’ve left it all behind, all my friends and family.”
A few things “came together at once,” Cowell explains. Her parents were downsizing from the bungalow that they had built in Darwen, providing an opportunity for Cowell and Bruins to buy it in January 2025.
“It was going to give me everything I wanted: all the land, woodlands, fields – things we could never afford near Berkhamsted. I felt it was sort of now or never.”
Living standards across the UK have slumped over the last decade, due to a combination of rising costs and stagnant wages.
Disposable incomes grew by just 2.4pc nationwide between 2013 and 2023, the same growth typically experienced in a single year before 2008, according to a recent report by Centre for Cities.
It is no surprise, therefore, that some, like Cowell, are choosing to relocate for a better quality of life – whether that’s more affordable housing, green space, disposable income or spare time.
Some areas have bucked the trend, the report shows. In 11 towns and cities, including Brighton, Barnsley, Warrington, Bristol, Wakefield, Preston and Milton Keynes, living standards have improved, with disposable incomes and economic growth rising by more than the national average.
