The requirements for public transport are far larger, and the region does get ludicrously lavished with funds for public transport (the recent expansions actually cost more than supplying the whole country with fibre...obv, the govt took the choice to allow telecoms companies to jack up prices 5%+RPI every year rather than cut back on projects that might lead to lower house prices for those in govt) but the train service in the South-East is comically bad relative to the rest of the UK along almost every metric (again, part of this is the load but...not all of it).

So outside London, you can just buy a cheap car, that is an option outside London (only Birmingham and Edinburgh are really undrivable). And if you are in any large city outside London, then the public transport is usually pretty good. Glasgow has an underground system, Newcastle does, Manchester has quite a big tram network iirc, rail is usually far better outside London, buses are usually pretty good (although not everywhere). The only issue that I can see people on here running into is the fact that there is a lot of housebuilding, and infrastructure in some of these new areas is poor...and, although cars are cheap, some cities are just shutting down all car travel from outside (Edinburgh is one, although it is sometimes difficult to distinguish what is deliberate and what is just incompetence).