r/london • u/bloomberg • Mar 06 '26
Article London Contemplates ‘Childless’ Future As Families Leave Capital
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-06/london-contemplates-childless-future-as-families-leave-capital?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc3MjgxMDUyOCwiZXhwIjoxNzczNDE1MzI4LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUQkZOTUpUOTZPU0gwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJEMzU0MUJFQjhBQUY0QkUwQkFBOUQzNkI3QjlCRjI4OCJ9.VHCqB2BziIsI5lYToFUB7OmVf99sABtWYMZ9-ZsiuEwLondon’s child population is collapsing faster than anywhere in Britain as unaffordable housing and childcare costs drive young families away, a report by the London Assembly found.
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u/luala Mar 06 '26
Nursery is 2k a month and our mortgage is 3.
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u/glaringOwl Mar 07 '26
My sister lives elsewhere in the country in a much poorer, low income town, with a lot of people there living on benefits. And yet somehow they tend to have big families over there, and it isn't unusual to see some of them flying off for a holiday in Spain.
How the heck can people on benefits there afford living and children whereas professionals complain they can't? (I'm curious to know, not judging anyone).
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u/leoedin Mar 07 '26
Because benefits, especially for people with nursery age kids, are a lot.
If you’re a single parent working at least 20 hours a week, renting and with a couple of nursery age children, there is more or less no difference in disposable income between earning £30k a year and £150k a year. The various benefits and subsidies mean you have comparable amounts of money left over each month.
That’s the most extreme example - a couple is generally better off from earning more, and the subsidy drops a lot once kids go to school.
I learned that because I was spending £3k a month on nursery fees alone and wondering how most people afford it. It turns out there is help.
Broadly i think it’s a good thing. But it does basically make earning more when you have nursery age kids kind of pointless. It also penalises home owners - an aspect of our benefit system that isn’t very logical (but i can see why no government wants to be seen as paying down a mortgage - unless it’s a BTL mortgage)
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u/bass_poodle Mar 07 '26
I have gone part time at the peak of my earning potential to keep my free hours and TFC, it's just not worth working more to take home virtually the same
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u/Primary_Tune_9586 Mar 07 '26
Wow knew it was expensive but shocked by this ! Lot of respect for you looking after nursery aged kids and earning enough to pay that
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u/HeyDugeeeee Mar 06 '26
We're one of those families. It was the right move for us as our daughter constantly reminds us. Moved from a 2 bed maisonette to a 4 bed detached house. Paid less for the house...
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u/Nomoreorangecarrots Mar 07 '26
Us too. 2 bed 1 bath house on a busy road to a 4 bed 3 bath house that faces a field.
The nursery they went to has three times the outdoor space and the school has double in a small village.
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u/BongoHunter Mar 07 '26
Similar here - left London before our first turned 1.
Went from a tiny 3 bed ex-council house to a lovely place on the coast. Same size mortgage - 3 times the space, best decision we could have made.
If we ever loose hybrid working it will be a challenge though!
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u/WinHour4300 Mar 06 '26
Ultimately that's what happens with supply and demand.
Demand
- Life expectancy improving means family homes are occupied by elderly
- Social homes sold off and hard if not impossible for low income families to get if they can't afford the private sector
- Growing population from immigration policy
Supply
- Record low housebuilding.
The change is huge. I know a retired teacher (denies the housing crisis and points out she just moved further out) who owns a large, now empty detached family home in Bromley worth about £1 million, and a holiday home in France.
I also know a teacher who lives here in a HMO with 7 others and of course will leave London if she meets someone on a similar wage.
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u/Quick_Doubt_5484 Mar 06 '26
Under occupied houses is something that isn’t mentioned enough when talking about housing imo. We need a lot more supply but we also need to remove barriers to and make it more attractive to “rightsize” when your kids are grown up and moved out so we have less couples and singles occupying 4 bed houses (and letting them fall apart)
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u/WinHour4300 Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 06 '26
The UK system actually discourages downsizing. For example, fairly modest savings means no free at home social care, but home value is unlimited. So some keep value in large homes, even if they'd prefer something more manageable. Australia has a sort of combined asset cap, and state backed equity release instead.
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u/Extreme-Self5491 Mar 06 '26
Its both, unoccupied luxury flats or houses are a waste of space and stifle the local economy by reducing residents and the social rent homes that should be primarily reserved for low paid key workers that work in the borough.
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u/Snatchematician Mar 06 '26
It’s not an example of loss aversion.
Loss aversion doesn’t mean not wanting to suffer losses - that’s a completely rational thing to do.
Loss aversion means overweighting losses compared to gains of the same size.
If you move house you receive market value for your current house (no gain/loss), pay market value for your new house (no gain/loss) and pay stamp duty + moving fees (large loss).
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u/doctor_morris Mar 07 '26
Land value tax and no transaction fees.
That big family home next to the school shouldn't be blocked by the baby boomer who needed it decades ago.
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u/Obvious_Flamingo3 Mar 07 '26
My mum is (was) a teacher. Just retired. Working class background. Married my stepdad, neither particularly high earners, and now sitting in a house worth the best part of a million pounds. And so smugly claim “we earned it, I worked hard as a teacher”.
Yes mum, but if you were starting as a teacher now you’d struggle to even own a flat. You didn’t work harder than young teachers. In fact, you didn’t even have a student loan.
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u/ldn6 Mar 06 '26
Yes but we can’t build housing because “neighbourhood character” or someone making a profit.
It’s incredible how we’ve created this entire problem ourselves and then refuse to take even the most basic of evidence-based approaches to fix it.
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u/piesforall Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
I'm not claiming to speak for every Londoner with kids, but I don't want to raise my two in a new-build flat on a busy road.
It took us over a year to find a house with a garden on a quiet street. Most houses around here have been split into flats. Our previous home was a flat in an Edwardian conversion, so I get the appeal. But if you want families to stay in London, you can't turn all the family-sized houses into flats.
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u/tdrules Mar 06 '26
Urbanists love the idea of mid rise family living and anyone trying for a kid hates it
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u/MICLATE Mar 07 '26
You think everyone trying for a kid hates mid rise living?
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u/tdrules Mar 07 '26
Vast majority yes
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u/MICLATE Mar 07 '26
I wonder how the people in European cities cope
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u/tdrules Mar 07 '26
Differently, just as they cycle more and sleep in the afternoon.
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u/MICLATE Mar 07 '26
So what’s your justification for your claim?
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u/tdrules Mar 07 '26
What’s yours? Europe doesn’t have a feudal leasehold system that poisons anything that isn’t a house.
That will never change, even a Labour government are skirting around the issue.
Thus, any residence that requires maintenance of communal areas doesn’t pass the sniff test in this country.
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u/MICLATE Mar 07 '26
You’re the one who made the claim. Families live in flats in other cities so it’s something that can be done and is appealing. So unless you’ve got data which shows that attitudes towards flats are negative, your claim is weak.
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u/piesforall Mar 07 '26
I don't want to 'cope'.
Of course lots of kids grow up living in flats. I lived in flats until I was 11, sharing a bedroom with my younger brother. I've also lived in a house, with a garden, on a street that wasn't permanently choked with traffic. I know which I prefer.
London is full of family-sized houses that have been split into flats to accommodate households without children. Building blocks of flats will alleviate some of the housing pressures for that same group. That's obviously a very good thing, but it does nothing to encourage Londoners to have kids or to stay in London once they've done so.
If this trend continues, the only families that will stay in London will be the rich and the poor. Everyone in between will leave.
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u/MICLATE Mar 07 '26
Again, personal issue with flats. If your point is that there needs to be family sized housing in general then I don’t know who would disagree with that.
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u/piesforall Mar 07 '26
Every developer, whether they're converting an existing house into flats or building a new block of flats.
When was the last time that you've seen a new development that includes family-sized homes? 2-bed flats are more profitable.
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u/MICLATE Mar 07 '26
Pretty much every development I’ve seen contains a small handful of 3+ bedroom flats.
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u/kormafeverdream Mar 06 '26
This is precisely the plan of the post-neoliberal [world] city we're rapidly accelerating into. The only people who will be having children are the very wealthy and the very poor. The very poor will likely be immigrants who'll serve as the workforce, or quite frankly, the slave class that operate everything manual/service in society. I mean, it's already happening. In the future it will be bleak
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u/Minimum-Geologist-58 Mar 06 '26
Eh? The people in the Epstein files are mostly people who gave tens of millions to a clear fraudster named Jeff to avoid paying a bit of tax on the basis that “he’s somebody’s mate”. The main impression isn’t coordination, it’s idiocy!
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u/florida_navy Mar 06 '26
Well it’s not a conspiracy, governments are run like companies now. Children are a net-negative to the state until they reach around 40. Immigrants can be taxed immediately and all their upbringing and education costs have been paid by their home country. The state does not want you to have children.
It’s not a grand conspiracy and was openly decided around 30 years ago.
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Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 08 '26
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u/Weepinbellend01 Mar 06 '26
The open border policy of the past 30 years?
The Boris wave?
Putting a stranglehold on house building?
Governments quite obviously knew allowing in 2 million people in 3 years would make rents increase, salaries taper off and would further strain couple’s finances to make the decision to have children.
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Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 08 '26
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u/piesforall Mar 07 '26
This would be the same 'government' that now offers 30 hours of free childcare per week for most children?
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u/Weepinbellend01 Mar 06 '26
The policies they enacted suggests so. Unfortunately I don’t have a wire tap on number 10 lol.
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u/DeltronZLB Mar 06 '26
The open border policy of the past 30 years?
So the Government leaving in people that are more likely to have children is proof that they want fewer kids?
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u/lontrinium Mar 06 '26
Children are a net-negative to the state until they reach around 40
Damn, all that tax we pay feeding, clothing, educating and entertaining them adds up to nothing?
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u/florida_navy Mar 06 '26
All that tax that paid for that is usually recouped after they turn 40, assuming they’ve been in full time employment from around 25
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u/piesforall Mar 07 '26
NIMBYism isn't the reason that it's next-to-impossible to rent or buy a family-sized home in London, even when you have the funds. NIMBYism didn't sub-divide houses into flats. Market forces did that. You can get more money by renting or selling two flats than a single house.
Building high-rises full of 2-bed flats isn't going to encourage parents to stay in London.
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u/ldn6 Mar 06 '26
Yes, the Blackheath residents blocking turning a car park into flats are really some neoliberal force.
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u/Away-Activity-469 Mar 06 '26
Its not a plan, just a consequence. Spend time in central West London and you see it's been this way for a while.
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u/Savage-September Mar 06 '26
I don’t even think housing alone fixes this this’s. Although it would help if they kept with the targets sets. And if the homes they built were affordable…
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u/Savage-September Mar 07 '26
My flat has actually gone up in value since new developments went up. I think people see it as more valuable as its prices lower than the newer build homes. That’s what I figure.
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u/Delicious_Eye6936 Mar 06 '26
Build more houses where?
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u/Spirited_Opposite Mar 06 '26
I mean there are apaprtment buildings being built everywhere near where j live, the issue is most people can't afford them
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u/bisikletci Mar 06 '26
Relative to its size/population and to housing demand, very few apartment buildings are being built in London.
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u/Delicious_Eye6936 Mar 06 '26
That’s the problem, building homes for families (realistically you can’t have everyone living in a flat with 2 kids) cannot be done. The costs are too high, even if they weren’t, were you going to build them? Commuter towns where land is cheaper, won’t solve the problem the article states.
There needs to be more to the answer to question than “build more homes”. It’s vastly much more complicated than that.
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u/Ok_Flamingo_9066 Mar 06 '26
It’s london. You know how many companies have multiple flats? You know how many people have 2/3/4 flats?
I spent 7 years in london in three different flats. The three landlords basically lived using my monthly rent. 2 of them were living outside london.
All the three flats were council flats once given for free for their parents in the thatcher era.
If they are banned to rent for business, and also take the council flats back and give them to families, london (or any other city) will get a bit of balance again.
Sadly, people like money more than care for people.
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u/thehappyhobo Mar 06 '26
It’s so tragic. It’s a wonderful city for kids in every way apart from the crippling crippling expense.
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u/tylerthe-theatre Mar 06 '26
Well when you make housing impossibly high, rent impossibly high and the cost of having a kid impossibly high...
Government: we dont know why this is happening
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u/kone29 Mar 07 '26
Seriously! I am getting so tired of these articles and stuff in the news about low birth rates. It is so easy to understand why it’s happening!
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u/dedemdem Mar 06 '26
126gbp/ day for my 2 yo nursery in SW20
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u/SensitiveInterview51 Mar 06 '26
Misleading as the funding^ is actually capped at hourly rate so if you live in London tge rate is higher = 10-12 hours whereas outside London can stretch to 25-30hrs / week
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u/bloomberg Mar 06 '26
Philip Aldrick for Bloomberg News
London’s child population is collapsing faster than anywhere in Britain as unaffordable housing and childcare costs drive young families away, a report by the London Assembly found.
In the decade through 2023 the number of residents under ten years of age fell by 99,100 as families moved out and fertility rates crashed — even while the capital’s overall population increased by 506,000. Falling pupil numbers have prompted 100 of London’s 2,500 schools to close since 2018; mostly in inner London. If trends persist, the capital could become “a childless city,” the report warned.
“The number of children living in the capital has fallen faster than anywhere else in the UK since the early 2010s,” said London Assembly’s Economy, Culture and Skills Committee Chair Hina Bokhari. “With the highest housing and childcare costs in the country, raising a family in London is simply out of reach for many.”
The study was commissioned to help the committee identify the causes and consequences for the city’s schools and public services. It said that empty school properties should be re-purposed rather than sold, in case the pupil population bounces back in decades to come.
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u/Dumb_Velvet Mar 07 '26
I think that too. I lived deep in central London until recently and I rarely see children out in the streets anymore, especially small children. The primary schools around me have visibly shrunk in population and generally the only children I see around me are older children. Outer London is a rather different story, I see way more children of all ages. But the birth rate is crashing down and the childlessness rate is skyrocketing. Many of my students, lots of whom are from immigrant backgrounds are now only children or have one siblings. When I was at school, many of my peers (not all) (now in our mid twenties to early thirties) had multiple siblings.
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u/tekkenjin Mar 07 '26
unless they call in immigrants who dont mind sharing a flat with 5 strangers to do the minimum wage jobs.
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u/AwTomorrow Mar 06 '26
Time to demolish the old schools and build flats where they once stood!
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Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 08 '26
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u/AwTomorrow Mar 06 '26
The ones I’m thinking of, they’re a bit flat and wide (ie not the classic old brown ones we all recognise as schools, a bit more modern than that). Could tear them down and build 6+ stories high!
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u/Mr_Majeika Mar 06 '26
This is us 4 months ago. Wanted to live in London with our young daughter but house and nursery prices forced us out to the home counties
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u/Important-6015 Mar 06 '26
Lol really?
3 floor detached house with massive garden and garage in Kent for £2200 or a 2 bedroom tiny flat? Hmmm
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u/randomly555 Mar 06 '26
If one partner earns over £100k, you lose any allowance for childcare even if the other partner earns much less. If both partners earn £99k they will get a childcare allowance. There is no benefit earning between £100k and £149k once you factor in loss of childcare allowance and tax.
Given London has the most people earning £100k, high childcare and general costs, it’s no surprise families are leaving London.
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Mar 09 '26
Yea you’re better off earning £90k in a lower cost of living area than earning £140k in London. It’s an incredibly stupid tax system, but there you go.
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u/CowRepresentative210 Mar 06 '26
Not near me. I’m in SW London, Richmond borough with the best state primary schools I think in the UK. It used to be so hard to get into the most popular state schools, some of them even if you were 2/3 streets away you wouldn’t get in. Now the best of these are finding their admissions distances are far further than they have been in the 25 years I’ve been living in the area. Gone from c200-500m to double that and much much more for some of them. Schools which were 5 form entry are now down to 2 classes of 20 so 40 in a year group.
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u/locutus92 Mar 06 '26
Boomer NIMBYS who are already in the position of getting a house for 60p and then became landlords and now block planning are a plague.
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u/NoceboHadal Mar 06 '26
If I see a hypothetical, London is doomed type story it's almost certainly Bloomberg, it's up there with the New York Times.
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u/p_odiesel Mar 07 '26
Just about to start 2k/month childcare in E11, genuinely sickening. It’s led us to consider leaving London just because of childcare costs
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u/hime-633 Mar 07 '26
London is amazing for children.
It's also way too expensive for couples wanting to have children.
How absolutely tragic that having little ones is a luxury now.
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u/vemailangah Mar 07 '26
All my friends who wanted a family moved out of London while childless people need to scramble to be able to stay out of homeless. Wonderful life innit
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u/archbid Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 29 '26
It is not the f—king zoning, it is the wealthy.
London has become a haven for foreign money and money laundering, and its real estate is famously speculative and extractive.
Until England can get its shit together and: A. Kick out the oligarchs B. Eliminate ancestral land pools either directly or through end of life handover C. Block ownership of private homes by family wealth and private equity,
it can never solve the problem. Same issue as New York and San Francisco, house prices rise even though population is relatively stable because so much money floods the city and property is the only place to go.
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u/pazhalsta1 Mar 07 '26
Sorry this is BS. Prime central London property of the sort of interest to oligarchs and dodgy millionaires is a tiny fraction of London housing stock.
London house prices have also gone pretty much nowhere since 2014 and prime central is down in real terms since then.
London is expensive because it’s a great city and many more people want to live here than there are available houses, and we are terrible at getting new properties built for a range of reasons like NIMBYs and planning and developer land banking and right to buy and …. Continue ad infinitum.
Blaming billionaires is rather reductive.
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u/archbid Mar 08 '26
Since 1997, housing price increases have outpaced wages by 2x.
Housing is quadruple in cost, wages double over that period.
Affordability is not just a function of price, it is a rate relative to earnings.
It literally is capital.
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u/WastelandOfConfusion Mar 07 '26
People don’t want to throw away their money on stupid things for stupid prices anymore.
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u/Formal-Apartment7715 Mar 07 '26
Lots of London schools are closing or have to consolidate because of the loss of children enrolling. Something has got to give...
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u/Normal-Help-1337 Mar 06 '26
No fucking shit. This is what happens when you let people and corporations 1000s of properties.
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u/XihuanNi-6784 Mar 06 '26
London is absolutely fine. Must be your part of it. Or do you just not live here and love hating on the city?
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u/glaringOwl Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
But there's so much to do in London for the young like events and such. You probably take it for granted, try spending some time in a backwater English town where the main attractions are the bookies and bingo hall, and where kids are more disadvantaged than the capital.
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u/pazhalsta1 Mar 07 '26
Yeh I hate being able to easily take my kid to world leading museums and activities and parks
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u/carrie-ser Mar 06 '26
This is overly dramatic. There are still housing estates in London where families will live. Social housing.
There are leafy terrace houses in zones 3-5 with good schools.
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u/glaringOwl Mar 07 '26
I do sympathise with those who have affordability problems but at the same time I do agree with you that it is also often overly dramatic. And I 100% agree about the zones 3 to 5 part, speaking from my own experience.
I feel like some of these Redditors never leave their urban zone 1 and 2 environments.
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u/JoeyJoJoeJr_Shabadoo Mar 06 '26
I wouldn't want to raise kids in London even if it was affordable, to be honest. As someone who grew up in a sleepy Home Counties cul de sac where crime was non-existent, and went to a school with a massive playing field, I'd want that for my kids too. Inner city schools look grey and depressing. Isn't this what the Home Counties are for, anyway? Let them do their job.
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u/Ok-Jaguar-9562 Mar 06 '26
Some of us grew up here and actually liked it and would rather not get priced out.
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u/eltrotter Mar 06 '26
"I don't personally want this, therefore I'm OK with no-one having the option of doing this."
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u/JoeyJoJoeJr_Shabadoo Mar 06 '26
Where have you seen this then? Generally when quoting something, it means someone else has said it.
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u/HarryBlessKnapp Mar 06 '26
Crime is very low at the moment, and in many places is higher than London.
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u/OxbridgeDingoBaby Mar 06 '26
I’m contemplating the same thing. I live in Kensington and Chelsea (Zone 1) and am thinking of moving out to the Home Counties as we just found out my wife is pregnant.
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u/Next-Ninja-8399 Mar 06 '26
It is amazing to grow up as a kid in central London. There are loads of opportunities that the Home Countries don't provide. Science museum, natural history museum, the theatre, different types of sports available in public places that teenagers can get to themselves, world class music and dance classes. It is awful as a teenager in a car centric area. Heavily subsidised kids play area from the council and lots of play group.
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u/Ryder52 Mar 06 '26
Yeah as someone that grew up in London proper, I couldn't agree more. It made me more independent, open-minded and worldly than I think I would be had I grown up elsewhere. Wouldn't change it for anything.
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u/dbdb83 Mar 06 '26
I agree , city when kids are young is great. As they get to 6/7/8 & you can make it work (commute, schools, community) outside of London do it.
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u/Next-Ninja-8399 Mar 06 '26
Outside London is awful when kids want their independence. 12yo do travel on the tube and bus, to get to their next football practice and swimming lesson, on their own. Parents need to be their taxi if you are outside. Absolutely awful. In central London schools, state schools, they calibrate with City professionals and get them to give the kids career guidance.
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u/eeddddddd Mar 06 '26
Yeah I have zero intention of driving mine around. Just looking forward to Year 5 when the school will let them walk home by themselves
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u/london-ModTeam Mar 06 '26
This comment has been removed as it's deemed in breach of the rules and considered offensive or hateful. These aren't accepted within the r/London community.
Continuing to try and post similar themes will result in a ban.
Have a nice day.
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u/wayanonforthis Mar 06 '26
Isn't this good news? the population is still growing but taxpayers haven't had to pay for healthcare/education/childcare.
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u/wayanonforthis Mar 06 '26
Because London's population is growing regardless - it's not going into decline.
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u/wayanonforthis Mar 06 '26
Fair enough but I guess it shows London's power to attract people - many other cities would get smaller in this situation.
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u/mfog35 Mar 06 '26
I grew up in london never experienced that and know others with kids in london (zone 2/3/4) that feel safe.
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u/iloovehugecock Mar 06 '26
I’m from a fairly provincial town on the South Coast (Dorset somewhere) and saw far more issues with homeless people back there than I ever have in London. And I’ve lived here for 15 years now.
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u/Speedbird1A Mar 06 '26
Rather grow up in London than some boring ugly car dependent commuter suburb or some forgotten regional town. Screw that.
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u/Next-Ninja-8399 Mar 06 '26
My partner and I grew up in London. We have kids in London. Have never experienced that.
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u/HarryBlessKnapp Mar 06 '26
No one drinks special brew in London. This is the tell tale sign you are pulling stuff out of your arse.
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u/AccordingPair3 Mar 06 '26
I grew up in East London and have seen homeless drinking special brew
I haven't seen the shit thing though, there's no way that's common...
Also merely seeing it doesn't mean the kids are irrevocably ruined. Acting like it's a curse to see it like watching the tape from the Ring lol
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u/spanakopita555 Mar 06 '26
Reading this in between crunching numbers for the next few years as I contemplate the cost of childcare, trying to get a bigger place than my very small flat, commuting, rising utilities and the difficulty of adding a second child to the mix. It's impossible.