Well enough, provided you do not need to go anywhere every morning. A third of workers commute to the spare room. Nearly half drive. Hardly anyone takes the train, despite two stations. Whitstable solved the commute by mostly not having one.
The rail line is there for anyone who wants it. Whitstable Rail Station and Chestfield & Swalecliffe Rail Station both sit on the line with direct trains to London, yet only about 2% of working residents take the train to work at the 2021 Census. Buses carry about 2% as well, from 123 stops across the town. Two stations and a bus network, and between them they move fewer commuters than walking does.
The commute mix tells the real story. About 35% of workers work from home and about 47% drive. Walking takes about 8% and cycling about 1%, which is modest for a flat-ish coastal town with a converted railway path running through it. About 16% of households have no car and about 39% have two or more, so the typical driveway holds a pair and the spare-room office holds the other half of the workforce.
For everyday trips, the Department for Transport's journey-time statistics give modelled times for the area as a whole, not a route from any particular door. The nearest town centre is about 9 minutes by car, 13 by bike, 17 by public transport and 25 on foot. A food store is about 8 minutes' walk or 7 by car, which is civilised. A family doctor is about 11 minutes by car, 21 by public transport and 37 on foot. Employment centres are about 9 minutes by car and 19 by public transport. The hospital is the sore point: about 26 minutes by car and 53 by public transport. These figures date from 2019; distances do not move, but bus timetables do, so treat the public-transport times with more caution than the car and walking ones.
The buses themselves are a working service rather than a line on a map. Stops average about 75 scheduled departures on a weekday and about three an hour at peak, and every stop in the town has some weekend service. That is a count of departures, not routes, but it means the bus is something you catch rather than something you plan a day around.
Broadband is where the town earns its working-from-home habit. Gigabit-capable broadband reaches about 79% of premises and superfast about 99%, and no postcode falls below the government's minimum service level. Mobile is solid too: about 100% of the area gets 4G or 5G from at least one operator and about 99% from every operator, so the choice of network is a matter of price rather than geography.
Road noise is worth checking. Every postcode in the area sits near a road-noise area at or above 65 decibels, the level at which official noise mapping treats traffic noise as significant, and the loudest band present reaches 75 decibels or more. That describes proximity to a mapped noise source, not what any given bedroom sounds like, so stand in the garden before you commit. Rail noise does not register at that threshold for any postcode.
For electric cars, the area has 9 public charge points with 23 connectors between them, 4 of them rapid. With four rapid units in town, charging is something to plan around rather than something to do while picking up milk.
Whitstable is middling on connections: the broadband and the local buses do their job, the trains carry almost no one and the hospital is a trek. It suits people whose working week happens on a laptop, and tests the patience of anyone whose week happens somewhere else.