Online, very well. On the ground, it's a car village. Nearly every home can get gigabit broadband. Half the households run two cars. Hardly anyone takes the train. The internet gets to town faster than the bus does.
Rail is close without being handy. The stations in the area include Doleham, Three Oaks and Crowhurst, with Hastings, Ore and St Leonards Warrior Square further in, but the 2021 census found only about 2% of Westfield's workers commuting by train. Buses fare worse on paper: the village has 12 bus stops, and about 1% of workers used a bus to get to work. Having stations nearby clearly isn't the same as using them.
The real commute is the driver's seat or the spare room. About 54% of workers drove to work and about 32% worked from home, which leaves walking at about 4% and everything else in the rounding. Only about 11% of households have no car, while about 50% have two or more. In Westfield a second car isn't a luxury, it's how the household gets through the week.
The Department for Transport's journey-time statistics, modelled for the area rather than traced from any particular door, put the nearest town centre about 16 minutes away by car and 31 by public transport. Cycling takes about 31 minutes too, and walking about 83. That walk time is the finding: the town is a drive away, not a stroll.
Broadband is the part that's properly sorted. Gigabit-capable connections reach about 96% of premises, superfast about 98%, and no postcode falls below the universal service minimum. For anyone who works from home, Westfield holds its own against most towns.
Mobile coverage is equally unremarkable, which is a good thing. Every postcode gets 4G or 5G from at least one operator, and about 98% get it from all of them. Pick any network and it will probably work.
For a typical working week, that adds up to a simple rule: drive to work, or don't commute at all. The census split already shows most people chose one of those, and the rest are the ones checking the timetable.
Everyday errands follow the same pattern, with a caution: the public transport times come from 2019, and services may have been cut since, so trust the car and walking times more. A GP is about 12 minutes away by car, 22 by public transport and 55 on foot. The nearest hospital is about 14 minutes by car and 30 by public transport. A food shop is closer, about 8 minutes by car or 18 on foot. The nearest large employment centre is about 21 minutes by car and 51 by public transport. That gap is the whole argument for the second car.
The current bus timetable is better than the commuting figures suggest. Across the 8 stops with service data, each averages about 17 weekday departures, roughly one bus an hour at peak, and every one of them runs at weekends. That's a real service, just not one to plan a nine-to-five around.
Road noise touches only a small part of the village. About 2% of postcodes sit near or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping starts treating road noise as significant, and the loudest band recorded is 70 decibels. Rail noise doesn't register. For most homes, traffic is something you drive through rather than listen to.
Westfield is middling on connections: first-rate for anyone working over fibre, hard work for anyone who needs to get somewhere without a car.