There is an echo in here.
Join your local group, talk to the nice people about what they've got - and why they chose (if they really did choose) that style.
And go on a course - but don't expect it to go into any detail, especially about 'recent' trends like foamed plastic hives and those "odd" top bar hives.
And there's no rush to buy anything now. In fact, wintertime seems to be bargain sale-time.
FWIW, standard British Standard National would seem the middle of the UK hobby beekeeper mainstream, and thus the easiest to sell if/when you decide you want something that would be in specific ways 'better' for you.
Red cedar is the low-maintenance material gold standard, with white cedar close behind. Pine is cheaper. Ply is cheaper still, but heavier. Plastic is cheap, pretty tough and (its principal virtue) it offers much better thermal insulation.
Insulation matters. It affects how much stores a colony needs to get through the winter. Which impacts how much sugar you need to buy, mix and feed. And it also affects how much honey you can take from the bees.
A Green Woodpecker will go through cedar just as easily as it could go through plastic.
Plastic has been used for 20 years in Europe, where the winter is even harsher than the Fens. But its "new" here, or so people think/say.
Apart from insulation (and the nagging question of whether its Brood Box is big enough for winter stores without a midwinter feed or two), the ordinary National BB ain't big enough for modern prolific bees. The colony won't fit in the house and promptly swarms. People get round that by running brood-and-a-half or double-brood. Twice as many frames to inspect, and a BB that might contain the Queen to demount, on every inspection.
The way round that is to use a taller BB with deeper 14x12 inch frames. Exactly like a National BB, except that its taller, and thus can house lots more bees.
But its hard to get your starter nucleus on those frames ... and you are not spoilt for choice if you are looking for plastic 14x12 BBs (though that should change over this winter). But everything else is absolutely standard National.
Thus, I'd suggest that you start with a National, in some sort of cedar, which you'll be able to sell on easily if you don't like it (or bees). A plastic national makes more sense, but would likely not sell so easily!
And you may even be able to buy a used National through your local club.
You then have the option of doing things the way they have been done for years, or saying "Hey, I'm (we are) not committed by mind-set and inventory, so I/we can choose whatever seems most sensible to me/us, for me/us and the type of bees I/we want to keep." Which may not be the most sensible for others or their bees.
And you'll soon realise that you really need more than one (compatible) hive, and a pile of compatible bits on standby... (or maybe a pretty WBC, or a top bar hive, with a window...)
You now owe me 2 cents.
