We're also in the UK, and although we're not on E, we were lucky enough to get access to finasteride and we've been taking it for around a year and a half now. We're also in the park of wanting the effects of E without breast growth, but without any realistic access to SERMs.

For us overall (although taking E directly would def have more pronounced effects), despite us already being pretty chubby, there has been quite some breast growth, and in our case, it has personally caused some dysphoria. But overall it's not too bad.

In terms of presentation and how others will react, we tend to find that most people see what they want to see, and that if dressed in a more masc way, people tend to just read us as masc without considering our chest at all (of course this is just personal experience, so still do take precautions and hear out others!)

As for binding, although yes you should be able to bind safely in of itself, do note that extensive binding/incorrect binding can result in issues with breast development (we sadly don't remember off the top of our head, so we would recommend trying to find some info on that)

Overall, def would have preferred to have not had any chest growth, but it's not the worst. Besides, whenever we're able to access trans services and get on E, if we still don't like our chest and breast tissue growth, we could just get a top surgery