Surrey Heath Borough Council will consider the long-term letting of car park spaces at Main Square Car Park in Camberley at its next Executive meeting.
The council has been approached by the long leaseholder of the Camberley Railway Station site, who are investigating its potential major redevelopment. This is critical to the town centre moving forward in line with the Local Plan.
Camberley Railway Station is an allocated site within the emerging Local Plan, involving a residentially-led development, commercial floorspace and new station concourse.
Due to a lack of potential car parking provision at the site, the proposed developer has asked the council about the possibility of leasing off site spaces.
The proposal would be for up to 210 spaces, and Main Square Car Park has spare capacity to accommodate this.
Main Square Car Park has 770 spaces, leaving 560 available spaces if 210 were let.
Analysis has shown that in the previous year to March 2025, Main Square Car Park reached occupancy of over 560 spaces for a total of 102 hours, spread over a total of 29 days.
On all of the occasions when the car park occupancy exceeded 560, the nearby 606-space Knoll Road car park had enough vacant spaces to cater for that excess, and at peak occupancy, still leave 53 spaces empty.
The nearby Atrium car park has 682 further spaces, rarely reaching capacity.
The proposed lease would involve the spaces on the top two floors of Main Square Car Park being let out on a staged basis.
This proposal supports several key priorities of the council including Support a Strong Economy and Create More Homes, Protect Our Environment and Deliver Effective Services with Sustainable Finances. As such the Executive is being recommended to approve the proposed lease agreement.
Surrey Heath Portfolio Holder for Property and Economic Development Cllr Kel Finan-Cooke said: “The proposed letting of these car park spaces delivers much-needed income and capital receipts to the council, and may help unlock part of the borough’s future housing supply. It could also facilitate improvements to the station itself.
“Analysis of the demand for car parking spaces in Camberley town centre has shown that if this scheme went ahead, it would still only be on very rare occasions that drivers who want to use Main Square would have to park in Knoll Road or elsewhere.”
The council’s analysis assumes the parking spaces would be let in three stages, between 2029 and 2037, in line with the stages of any future development of the site.