Could this work? If you remove the kitchen/dining room wall and move the entrance to the kitchen to the hall, and move the dining room doors to the sitting room over to the left, and move the utility door to the side entrance. This would give a sizable kitchen/diner and separate sitting room but could be connected with glass panels perhaps.

You could also extend your hallway down to the study, again with glass panels if losing too much light.

if you need cloaks storage in the hall then the entrance to the kitchen will need to come in a bit, to that that I have drawn, but maybe you will use the side entrance as a boot room.

You would still need to access the family room through the sitting room with this plan but should flow better

Is the main entrance by the garage door?
Where is the best garden?
There are windows in the study and family room that face the side- are they just looking at the neighbors fence or do you have garden or a view on that side?

Hi Jonathan, The main entrance is at the front next to the downstairs loo. The best garden is to the rear, but we do have a side garden to the side of the kitchen but the family and study side windows face onto a fence and hedge, which is ours and this is next to a road (a very quite one) so no neighbours. These side windows are high and about 4ft from the hedge so whilst not the best its not unpleasent. All the houses have very large frontages about 20/30ft so the view from the front is ok too.

Although I understand not wanting to take on extra work I do think moving the kitchen could give you a much better layout

Completley agree as this was our orginal thought but we can’t move the kitchen from the far wall due to plumbing/water so really limits our options unfortunately.

I recognize that digging a new drain from the side of the house to connect with drains at the front has a cost implication- this may not be as much as you fear and it may be worth investigating. You could also look at pumps. You might consider reusing the water for the garden.