What to do when you move to the UK on a Tier 5 Youth Mobility Visa // Part II
So you’ve picked up your biometric residence permit, you’ve got an NI number, and you’ve opened a British bank account with your new British mobile number (if not, check out Part I). There’s a few other bits and bobs that you might need to nail down when moving here.
Right of Way
Pedestrians do not have the right of way. You will figure this out almost immediately. Cars will not expect to stop for you unless you’re in a crosswalk (aka zebra crossing!) and are only required to stop if there are these yellow lights above it (aka pelican crossing!). Do not get run over when you move here.
Biking in London
I mostly cycled when I lived in Oakland, so I basically do the same now that I live here. It takes a little bit to get used to cycling on the other side of the road, and on the other side of cars, but it comes to you eventually.
Unlike a lot of American public transit systems, London’s is not very bike friendly. Buses can’t carry bikes on them, you’re only allowed a folding bike on the Tube (to be fair — I’ve also never seen someone with a folding bike on the Tube), and the Overground only allows bicycles on it during non-peak hours. So if you cycle there, you have to cycle home. There is a network of those city bikeshare Santander bikes, but they only exist in Zone 1 of the city, which is useless for me.
Utilities
In terms of my utilities — we pay the usual water bill (via ThamesWater) which runs us about £200 a year. We also have gas and electricity through Tonik — which in the winter runs us a total of £70–80 a month and in the summer, less than £30 a month.
Quick note on gas and electric — when we first moved into the house it was through British Gas, but we found a cheaper deal using reusable energy with Tonik via Money Supermarket and it was remarkably easy to change your energy provider. I literally signed up with Tonik and they handled the cancellation process with British Gas. Crazy. Also there’s tons of competing gas and electric providers in the UK.
In terms of internet, we have a speedy plan via Virgin Media. It costs us about £30/month. You can sign up for internet through them before you move into a house, so that when you move in, the internet is up and done. Priorities.
And then, you have to pay a Council Tax. So this is like a local tax (it also covers your waste pickup, road maintenance, etc.) — and it varies depending on which neighborhood you live in. I live in the Haringey borough, so I pay the Haringey Council Tax which is an unusually high amount. We pay something like £1,400/year.
All this adds up to mean that my boyfriend and I each pay about £100–125 a month in utilities, which actually feels like a lot.
Pharmacies
Welcome to (almost free) healthcare! It’s great, I’m a big fan. Whenever you get a prescription from a doctor (or GP, general practitioner, as they are more often referred to here) — they all look the same, no matter the doctor:
This green paper slip!
The nice thing is you can take that to any pharmacy to get it filled. Most grocery stores have pharmacies, and Boots (the UK equivalent of CVS/Rite Aid) is always an easy option as they exist literally everywhere. All prescriptions cost £8.60 — which is insane. Birth control is free.
Grocery Stores
There are the big grocery chains- Sainsbury’s, Tesco’s, Waitrose (more of the middle-high end), co-op (a co-op food chain!), and even a few Whole Foods peppered around. They’re all kind of what you expect, although for some reason the Brits like to wrap all produce in plastic.
Also — there is a phenomena grocery store/department store called Marks & Spencer aka M&S which exists. It’s like if Macy’s decided to open a grocery chain too. Anyhow, they have nice little grocery stores with great marketing and branding and they also sell reasonably priced socks.
There are also little green grocers/off-licenses which are basically little bodega dotted around the city. Off-license means that it’s a shop licensed to sell alcohol to be drunk off the premises (as opposed to a bar). There’s a lot of these going on:
They may look kind of like a Turkish 7–11 but the produce is usually pretty good and fresh, and there’s not an infuriating amount of plastic everywhere.
VAT
What is VAT, you might ask? It’s tax. The VAT price on a good or service is included in the price listed — none of this trying to figure out what 6% of a 99 cents is here. The price on the shelf is what you pay, VAT included.
Hope that helps! More to come.