Sun, Nov 09, 2003 page6

• Brits let plane take commuting strain

  • THE GUADIAN
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  Fed up with the stress and urban chaos of London, David Copestake and his wife, Sian, decided it was time to join those moving away and find a new place for their two school-age children to grow up.

  Looking for a home where David could continue to commute to London, they first thought of tranquil Norfolk, just north of London.

  After all, it had open spaces, fresh air and houses which are half the price of property in London.

  But the Copestakes wanted more -- perhaps a beach, maybe year-round sunshine and perhaps neighbors with a distinctly European outlook.

  So rather than the Broads they settled for a rather more radical location -- several hundred kilometers away.

  Last year they moved into a smart, spacious apartment only a two-minute walk from a beach on the sparkling Mediterranean, in Marbella, southern Spain.

  "It would have been an hour and a half or two hours to London and I still would have been sleeping there during the week. This way I can be in the office in about three hours, with the pilot doing the driving from Malaga to Luton airport," explained David, an estate agent.

  The family are among the pioneers of a new form of weekly commuting which estate agents and consular officials say is beginning to take off in Spain as a combination of budget airlines, Britain's creaking transport system and the lure of sun and sea persuade adventurous families to migrate south.

  At around ?40 for off-season flights to London-Luton airport, where David keeps his car parked, commuting costs to his north London offices were not much higher than they would have been from Norfolk, he said. "That is cheaper than filling my car up, anyway."

  He spends an average of four days a week at the office, working 10 to 12-hour days at his estate agency and sleeping at a house in north London. Then he drives back to Luton airport. He said he was by no means the only person commuting to London from Marbella.

  "We had a neighbor who travelled to a job in London while his wife stayed here. A friend who is an insurance broker in north London has already put his kids down for the international school here and will be moving out next year," he said.

  At the Monarch Airlines offices in Malaga, staff are now used to regular clients travelling to Britain on Mondays and returning on Fridays.

  "We have regulars who are on the same flights. Lots of them have families and the wife stays here," said Johanna Ronn, who works for Monarch.

  With several dozen cheap flights to some 10 different UK airports every day, Malaga airport is key to the new commuters.

  Consular officials say that, while there have always been a handful of the very rich who live on the Costa del Sol and run companies in Britain, the new commuters are generally self-employed professionals or owners of small-to-medium businesses. They include everything from solicitors to IT consultants and web designers.

  David Cameron, who runs a scientific publishing business, commuted to Britain from Barcelona every week or two for more than a year before moving his company to Spain last year.

  With his wife and two children installed in the nearby seaside town of Sitges, he found the travel no more stressful than when he commuted into London.

  "I used to commute from Essex in south-east England. It was an hour and a half or two hours on the train -- more if someone had thrown themselves under a train. It became intolerable," he said.

  The new commuters, though still few in number, are part of a wider change in the trend for British people moving to Spain.

  "It used to be retirees exclusively but in the last five years there has been a growing trend for young families to come. I would say they are now almost half our clients," said Carlo Ferrari, a British estate agent in the eastern Spanish coastal town of Javea.

  Most do not commute to Britain but find work in the booming Spanish tourism, real estate and construction industries.

  The new immigrants are mainly looking for a safe and comfortable place to bring up children.

  "Here you get full-day kindergartens for two-and-a-half or three- year-olds, which frees both of the parents up for working," explained Ferrari.
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