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Like a said, a reasonably simple question.

What is the best fleet for a beginner to start with that's not imperial?

Chaos, they don't have any unique weapons outside of their 2 character ships. They do have a mark system which is easy to pick up and they're cheaper than most fleets because of the plastic cruisers.

Tau and Space Marines are both pretty straight forward too, although SM are a bit harder to learn how to play.

Yup, chaos is mighty nice for beginners. They are a bit more forgiving when it comes to facings, since most chaos have prow armaments in addition to their port and starboard broadsides. They are a bit quicker on their feet, and have a nice balance between weapon batteries and lances. The marks make it easy to customize and points-fill before you are certain in what direction you wish to take them.

Tyranids are not that difficult either, since with synapse rules it gives you a defined set of conditions to apply special orders in. For example, if you are going to smack into a rock, the instinctive behavior of the vessels tells them to burn retros (slowing them down, kinda like stomping on the brakes) to avoid the impact, no command roll required. The ships are cheap to build too, all you need to get are some leftover bits from 40k tyranids.

Chaos is good for the plastic cruisers and forgiving weaponry

Tau are good but need a different playstyle (they rely very heavily on ordnance). Only problem is that the cheap and good-looking FW stuff needs expensive IA3 rules, whilst the expensive and fugly GW stuff gets free rules...

Other fleets have more special rules and are generally harder to learn for beginners, but tbh you can't go far wrong with a ruleset as good as BFG (definately GWs best effort imho)

Looked around and I can get a 1500pt army off of my friend for £25.

Thanks Guys!

That's cool!