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1. There are 4 major UK carriers (called networks here) they are Vodafone, o2, EE, & Three. Popular MVNOs are GiffGaff & Tesco Mobile (both run on O2), ID Mobile (runs on Three), and Lycamobile (runs on EE) Most if not all of these will offer 30-day prepay SIMs with unlimited calls and SMS but limited data, all the way up to 2 year contracts. Pick whichever is the cheapest and try it out, if the reception is crap on one, try another. They all have the major cities down but can get patchy in the countryside.

2. Building societies are mostly local to the area you end up and others have mentioned the one national brand is Nation Wide.

3. Lidl and Aldi are the two main low priced ones, they are quite small but stock everything you need. Then the big names are Tesco, Sainsbury’s & Asda - bigger places with name brands but more expensive (even the “value” brands) and at the top of the tier you’ll find Mark’s & Spencer (M&S for short) and Waitrose - these are the “Whole Foods”-esk places where you pay the maximum but you get the best quality going. To give you an idea, my boyfriend and I spend ~£70 a week on a delivery order from Morrisons, if we were to go out ourselves and shop we could get in under 60 but then we’d have to carry our bags full of stuff back home. A similar shop at Waitrose would easily reach over £100.

4. You go with whichever GP has the space to take you as a patient. There’s really no shopping around.

5. The NHS website has a page on Autism support with links to organisations that can help: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/autism/support/ And the UK has our fair share of weebs. We even have the Hyper Japan expo every year along with many other events. Manga can be found in bookshops and communities both online and off exist for culture sharing, language learning, etc.

6. Yes you’ll need your passport if you don’t have a driving licence as those are the only two forms of ID that are guaranteed to be accepted. The good news is that you can apply for a provisional licence (like a learner’s permit) and use that like I do. I have never needed to learn to drive but I have it in my wallet all the same.

7. Same in the UK. Bills are rarely included and you’ll have to pay a deposit upfront - that can be 1 to 3 months rent.

8. Ikea is the ever-present safety net/baseline of furniture that everyone can get everywhere. When you can spring for it, get something nicer but don’t settle for paying large sums for some cheap crap when Ikea makes the same thing cheaper.

9. See above. Ikea/supermarket is fine and you can splurge on nicer ones later on in the future.

10. Primark is on every other street in the country and will sell you a plain white Tee for £3. When you get tired of them wearing out so fast, M&S, Next, Peacocks, and Matalan are there for your perusal.

11. Almost all home ISPs here run on the OpenReach network. That used to be BT (the phone network) but now BT are one of many ISPs that run over the same (mostly copper) network. The only other ISP with it’s own network is Virgin which is full fibre. There’s a new Community Fibre network starting up but it’s slow going so most people are stuck with whatever runs to their house.

12. Yes you need a TV license to use iPlayer.

13. Very much depends where you end up. Every cuisine in the world is cooked in the UK, but you might have to travel to find a good place.

14. You’re in luck! We have Taco Bell as of just a few years ago. There’s also Tortilla, Wahacca, Benito’s Hat, and I’m sure many other places.

15. https://www.youtube.com/@evan - an American who moved to the UK a decade ago. Bit of a mixed bag content wise but a lot on current UK seen through American eyes.

16. Jeans and a T-shirt are fine and probably preferred in Summer since old buildings don’t have air-con

17. Not yet and she might be done with school by the time those government plans get set in motion. School ends at 16 years old here and from there it’s typically a 2-year A-level (advanced level) in one subject to prep you for university. Nothing is mandatory after leaving school at 16 though.

18. In the cities there are many small businesses that don’t even take cash. I haven’t handled paper money since before they swapped to plastic several years ago. Outside of the city though, there is still the occasional place that wants cash only. Typically they have a sign in the window letting you know to go to an ATM before you go in.

19. If you have a credit rating and it’s good then you MIGHT get more favourable mortgage rates. It is functionally useless for any other purpose.

20. The best kept secret in the country is that Marmite is actually very meh.

Everyone has done a cracking job of the questions, so all I’ll add is:

ISPs:

Most ISPs are nationwide.
Almost all fixed lines have no data caps.
If you’re in a standard area, go with a provider that costs a little more, but have good customer service, and know their arse from their elbow.

Zen are good imo. https://zen.co.uk/
If you already know your address, their site will check what you can get, and how much it will be.

If you get a friend to refer you, you also get a £25 love2shop voucher.

Fixed line contracts are usually for 12-18 months.
You can get one month ones (give me a shout if you want them pointing out), but you may be better off with a 5G dongle for short term accommodation.

Further detail:

Most ISPs use the same physical wires/fibres owned by OpenReach, or an altnet, which go from your house to the nearest exchange.

You normally cannot speak to the wire/fibre provider directly, any maintenance request has to come from your ISP.
So if there is ever a problem, you’re relying on the ISP doing the legwork. So good CS is critical, imho.

You pay the provider, they pay the cable owner to get it to them, then provide the backhaul.

There are some area based exceptions, like single-provider fibre.
And there is also Virgin. But I wouldn’t go with Virgin.

You’ve had a bunch of good answers but I’ll chip in with a couple of additional thoughts:

Three. If you’re not planning on driving then location will probably determine where you shop more than almost anything else.

Six. I haven’t shown anyone ID in over a year. Apply for a provisional driving license as soon as you can and that will be fine for any need. Keep the passport at home!

Twelve. Channel 4 is also a beneficiary of license fees so you may need a license if you watch that. But as others have said, the TV License people have very little power to actually do anything.

Thirteen. I’d guess there’s, at most, a dozen restaurants in the entire UK which will serve what you would recognise as a corn beef hash. So break that bad news to her sooner rather than later. There are places you can get a good breakfast (and a gazillion pubs and cafes and restaurants where you can get a full English/Scots/Welsh/Irish). Many places will also do American style pancakes) but, otherwise, cooked breakfasts will not be a taste of home.

Fourteen. Equally you won’t find much ‘proper’ Mexican. You can find crap Tex-Mex places in most cities but I’ve only been to one Mexican restaurant (in London, not open any more) that was anything like as good as Mexican restaurants I visited when living in the US.

Sixteen. Jeans or chinos paired with a shirt (not a suit shirt but also not a Hawaiian shirt), plain t-shirt, polo shirt. Shoes or smart sneakers. On day one I’d go chinos, shirt and shoes then dial down depending on the culture of the office.

Eighteen. Cash free is easier here than in the US. I haven’t bought anything with cash in over a year. If you have a cell phone with Apple Wallet or the Google equivalent, you can pay for almost everything anywhere using that.

Twenty. Meh. The whole ‘love it / hate it’ thing is an advertising slogan. Some people like it, others don’t, no wars are fought or lives lost over Marmite. You’re more likely to get into a fight if you pronounce scone as scone.

1. There are lots of good price comparison sites - I tend to run through a few but often use Compare the Market as you can save off your details and it makes it easier to check next time. This works for phones, utilities, broadband, insurance, etc. You could probably box off the lot with a few hours on this.
2. Money Saving Expert/Martin Lewis is your go to for finance, see what his most recent recommendation is. You can do comparisons for banks/building societies too but moving isn’t a big deal if a new deal pops up.
3. I do my Big Shop at Aldi - they’ve started stocking pulses and brown rice, so my supplemental shop (usually at Asda) has shrunk to half a dozen items I prefer elsewhere (their hot chocolate is far too powdery). Aldi and Lidl can’t be beaten for price and I’ve had no issues with quality. They do sushi too, apparently, but I don’t eat it. I’d recommend shop at Aldi/Lidl and see what meets your needs then try Asda and then Sainsburys for anything else.
4. You can check out a GP’s rating online but you’ll usually find they are all decent and you can switch. Getting a dentist can be trickier.
5. Sounds like you want a Comic Con, rather than a comics convention (although if she draws she might like one of those too - Thought Bubble is the big one but there are others). The big one is in London but most cities have large well organised ones and they are all very LGBTQ+ and ND friendly but it might help if she’s met a few people online who go. There are also specific anime cons around the country. If she’s good she might want to see if there’s a small press title looking for artists. This feels like an area I am qualified to help in, so I will follow up on this but feel free to message me directly. Other than that arriving late in school can be tricky (I wasn’t born in the UK and moved around a bit, I had friends turn up at a similar age but my friendship group was a ragtag bunch of misfits so we swept up most of the strays) and getting special educational needs (SEND) help can be a fight, more helpful if she already has a diagnosis. Friends and family have been through the wringer and have struggled (even my cousin who is a formidable and in the health field) and I won’t lie, this could be the trickiest aspect if your move. She might get lucky and fall in with a good bunch but it might be she gets by on extracurricular activities and perhaps has a better experience in sixth form and Uni (from what I’ve seen anyway).
6. You can get ID cards but it’d be an idea to apply for a driving license as the provisional one is universally accepted.
7. Not done this recently.
8. IKEA is a good shout but there are other furniture stores - flat packed beds and drawers are good go tos from them (as is a lot of household staples) but I am not a fan of their chairs. Try Sofology and the like.
9. You can get them from IKEA too but I tend to get all that from Asda (used to he owned by Walmart, if that helps give you an idea) - they do big box sets of crockery that I am still using years later, and have cutlery, glass, pots and pans, etc as well as air fryers and microwaves, although if you want a bugger selection of electrical items, try Curry’s. I moved a few years back and helped a friend’s son move to Uni and the advice in this point and the previous one just got everything up and running quickly at a decent price and quality. You might want to shop around at M&S or John Lewis for specific better quality items but to get your basics sorted these IKEA and Asda will sort you out.
10. Kind of a similar answer, for your basics (underwear, t-shirts, jeans, coats, etc) the George at Asda isn’t bad. If you need better quality items then go to M&S or Next - I went to them for a suit, decent quality shoes and a good raincoat (they have a bigger stock online so I tend to click and collect a bunch of stuff then return it). As my sister-in-law tends to get me clothes for my birthday and Christmas, I suspect most of my general clothing is from Next, if I was buying it myself, I’d tend to go to Asda. Which might be a guide to price vs quality.
11. See 1.
12. Sounds like you need a TV licence.
13. I suspect we run into cultural differences here and someone else has addressed the specifics. Generally, a nice area will have cafes that do a good breakfast, avoid greasy spoons (unless you are after that experience) and keep an eye out for a cafe that is mixed in with a good bakers or cake shop.
14. Again it depends on the area but if there’s an area with a decent selection of restaurants you might find a “Mexican”. There is one near enough to me that, if I wanted it I could have it but there are also Turkish, Greek, Indian, Chinese, Moroccan, Nepalese and Indonesian so it rarely gets a mention (I’ve been once, it was fine).
15. Others may be better placed to offer advice but I am sure there’s plenty on YouTube and TikTok that’ll cover the basics but it won’t really substitute for diving in and knowing you’ll make a few mistakes. People are generally tolerant of that kind of thing.
16. I’d avoid sweats (jogging bottoms) in work as they have class connotations and would raise eyebrows. Jeans or cargo pants with a t-shirt, long-sleeved top or jumper should be fine but ask.
17. I’ll pass that over to the Welsh contingent.
18. I keep some cash on me but only really use it to split the bill in a restaurant and I could use card for that too but it can get fiddly if others are too but the staff are fine taking your money anyway you want to give it.
19. No idea.
20. Good, it’s muck.

Hello I am from Swansea now based in London,

Three & EE are very big phone providers, Can’t go wrong with the big Tesco & Sainsbury,

If you end up in Wales the nearest IKEA is very far away best deliver or look at Argos/NEXT Home

If you want variety in shopping for clothes or things like that I would look in Cardiff,

A trip to London and its various market shops there’s more niche food choices

It’s not British centric but the show Sex Education isn’t a bad choice, it has no set location nor era but it feels modern and is very relatable particularly if you’re different,

I would not recommend carrying your passport everywhere, application for a provisional driving license is a great substitute. It’s easy to do online.

Swansea and Cardiff has a great alternative and lgbt+ friendly scene particularly Cardiff, there are plenty of nerdy shops aswell all this should be great for your daughters interests. Many younger a folk love that Japan stuff etc, There is also a thriving music scene, Some folks in Swansea can still be a bit backwards but that’s a small place for you, luckily everybody is genuinely very nice. It’s better now

Welsh is taught in schools but only to a GCSE short course, I finished secondary in the early 2010s

Swansea is more English centric compared to say towns further north like Carmarthen and Lampeter, I remember teachers in my school spoke and taught in English in other subjects less so further up.

Welsh is a lovely language and even though it’s a requirement it shouldn’t be a problem, if your daughter is super interested she can pursue it further down the line, to me it feels like having additional language subjects like French or German etc,

Swansea has an ice cream shop called Joe’s and it’s absolutely lush