Woking Council: Is it Time to Rethink Parking?
If we genuinely want to revive Woking town centre, we need to make it easier and more attractive for people to visit. We can talk about regeneration, filling empty shops, supporting independent businesses, improving public spaces and organising events, but none of those things can succeed without one essential ingredient: people. We need people walking through the town centre, browsing shops, meeting friends, eating in restaurants, drinking in cafés, going to the theatre and discovering businesses they didn’t know existed. In retail we call it footfall, but really it is the lifeblood of any successful town centre.
One of the simplest things we could do to encourage more of that activity is to rethink the cost of parking in Woking. Parking isn’t the only issue facing the town centre, and cheaper parking certainly isn’t a magic solution, but it is one of the factors we can actually do something about. When people have a choice between driving somewhere with free or inexpensive parking, shopping online without leaving home, or paying several pounds before they have bought anything in Woking, we shouldn’t be surprised if parking influences that decision.
How does Woking compare with other Surrey towns?
At Woking’s Victoria Place, parking currently costs £2.50 for up to one hour, £4 for up to three hours and £8 for up to six hours. Those individual amounts might not sound enormous, but they become much more significant when we think about regular visits. Someone coming into Woking for a few hours every Saturday could spend more than £200 a year simply parking their car. That is £200 before they have bought lunch, had a coffee, visited the theatre or spent a single pound with a local retailer.
The comparison with other Surrey towns is interesting. In Reigate, council parking can cost around £1.60–£1.70 for an hour and £3.40 for three hours, while council car parks are free on Sundays and bank holidays. Farnham’s Central car park charges £1.40 for an hour, £2.60 for two hours and £3.90 for three hours, with Sunday parking also free. Camberley’s Main Square charges £2.60 for two hours and £3.50 for three hours, and Surrey Heath Borough Council has gone further by introducing targeted parking discounts specifically designed to encourage people into the town centre and support local businesses.
Guildford demonstrates why we shouldn’t simply claim that Woking has the most expensive parking in Surrey, because some Guildford tariffs are higher. The more useful question is whether Woking is using parking policy as effectively as it could to support the wider town-centre economy. Other councils are experimenting with free periods, Sunday parking and targeted discounts. Woking should be prepared to do the same.
Parking is part of the town-centre economy
We need to stop thinking about a parking space purely in terms of how much money it generates from parking charges. A parking space is potentially the beginning of a much larger chain of economic activity. Someone parks their car and walks into town. They buy a coffee, browse several shops, have lunch, buy some clothes and perhaps go to the theatre or cinema. A few pounds collected from that parking space might have facilitated £50, £100 or considerably more in spending throughout Woking.
That money doesn’t disappear into a machine or sit on a balance sheet. It supports businesses, pays wages, helps independent retailers meet their rent and service charges and gives businesses the confidence to remain in Woking. Successful shops and restaurants also make empty units more attractive to new businesses. More occupied units create a better town centre, which attracts more visitors, which supports more businesses. That is the virtuous circle we need to create.
The opposite can also happen. Fewer visitors mean less spending. Less spending puts pressure on businesses. Businesses close, empty units increase and the town becomes less attractive to visitors. Once that cycle begins, reversing it becomes increasingly difficult. That is why anything capable of influencing footfall deserves serious consideration.
The extra hour matters
There is another important part of this discussion that often gets overlooked: how long people stay.
Town centres benefit from people wandering. Someone might come into Woking intending to visit one particular shop but notice another business on the way. They might decide to have lunch because they have time. They might discover a new independent retailer or see an event taking place. That unplanned activity is enormously valuable to a town centre.
Put people under time pressure and their behaviour changes. Instead of wandering, they complete whatever they came for and leave. Instead of stopping for lunch, they head back to the car. Instead of exploring another part of the shopping centre, they check the time.
This is particularly important for independent businesses such as Velvet Revival. Most customers don’t necessarily wake up on Saturday morning thinking, “Today I’m going to drive into Woking specifically to buy a vintage jacket.” They might come into town for something completely different, walk past our shop and decide to come inside. They might then discover the hundreds of vintage, preloved and reworked garments we have in store. That kind of discovery is how high streets work, and the longer people remain in town, the greater the opportunity for it to happen.
Can we stop debating this and actually test it?
Rather than continuing to argue about whether parking charges affect footfall, Woking could simply find out. I would like to see Woking Council introduce a six-month parking and high-street trial, reducing charges at selected times and measuring the results properly.
For example, Woking could experiment with three hours for £2 on Saturdays, discounted or free parking after 3pm on selected weekdays and a heavily reduced Sunday rate. We could also have occasional free-parking Saturdays linked directly to markets, live music, community activities and other events designed to bring people into town. Another possibility would be a parking cashback scheme involving participating independent businesses, where customers who spend above an agreed amount receive some of their parking cost back.
The important part is that this wouldn’t simply be a giveaway. It would be an experiment. Before the trial began, the council could establish baseline figures for car-park occupancy, town-centre footfall, average length of stay and other available indicators of economic activity. Those figures could then be compared with the results during and after the trial.
If cheaper parking makes no meaningful difference, we will have learned something useful. But if car parks become busier, people stay longer, footfall increases and businesses report increased customer numbers, we will have equally valuable evidence that parking policy can play a role in Woking’s regeneration.
Woking has already experimented with this idea
This isn’t an entirely new concept for Woking. In 2022, Woking Borough Council trialled discounted Saturday parking at Victoria Place, allowing customers to receive a third hour of parking when they paid for two. At the time, the council itself explained that the initiative was intended to encourage visitors to stay longer and enjoy Woking’s shopping, dining and leisure facilities.
That logic remains sound. In fact, given everything Woking town centre has experienced in the years since, there is arguably a stronger case for experimenting with incentives today. If encouraging somebody to remain in town for another hour was considered worthwhile then, it deserves another serious look now.
An empty parking space doesn’t help the high street
There is a very simple economic reality at the centre of this argument. An empty parking space generates no parking revenue, but more importantly it generates no economic activity for the businesses around it. It produces no café customer, no restaurant customer, no theatre customer and no retail customer.
We shouldn’t therefore measure the success of a town-centre parking strategy purely by the amount of money collected from parking. We should also consider occupancy, visitor numbers, length of stay and the economic activity that those visitors generate. A car park generating slightly less revenue per vehicle but bringing substantially more people into Woking could potentially be far more valuable to the town as a whole.
That doesn’t mean parking should necessarily be free. Car parks have costs and Woking Council’s financial position is well documented. Nobody seriously suggesting a parking experiment should pretend otherwise. The argument is instead that parking should be treated as part of the infrastructure supporting the town-centre economy, rather than simply as an isolated source of revenue.
This isn’t cars versus public transport
Nor should this become another argument about cars versus public transport. We should absolutely encourage people to walk, cycle, use buses and travel by train whenever those options are practical. Woking’s transport connections are one of the town’s major strengths.
But we also need to acknowledge how people actually live. Families drive into town. Older people drive. People with mobility difficulties may need their cars. People buying larger items use cars. Visitors come from villages and areas where public transport isn’t always convenient. Some people simply have a choice about where they spend their Saturday afternoon.
The challenge for Woking is making sure that when people have that choice, Woking remains attractive.
Give people a reason to rediscover Woking
There are businesses in Woking working extremely hard to give people reasons to visit. There are independent shops, restaurants, cafés, entertainment venues and community organisations trying to create something worth coming into town for.
At Velvet Revival, we’re trying to play our small part in that. We sell vintage, preloved and reworked clothing, but we also want the shop to contribute something more to Woking. We have used our space for live music, workshops, sustainable-fashion initiatives and community activities because we believe independent businesses should help create the kind of town centre people actually want to spend time in.
But individual businesses cannot regenerate a town centre on their own. It requires a joined-up approach involving businesses, landlords, the shopping centre, the council and the wider community. We need events and activities. We need attractive public spaces. We need to promote the businesses already here. We need sensible ways of bringing empty units back into use. And we need to remove unnecessary barriers that might discourage people from visiting.
Parking is one of those barriers.
A challenge to Woking Council
So here is the proposal. Give Woking six months of genuinely cheaper parking and measure what happens.
Establish the baseline first. Publish the current figures for parking occupancy and town-centre footfall where they are available. Introduce meaningful parking reductions at carefully selected times, promote them properly and connect them with a wider campaign encouraging people to rediscover Woking. Then publish the results.
Let’s find out whether cheaper parking increases car-park occupancy. Let’s see whether it changes Saturday footfall. Let’s measure whether people stay longer. Let’s ask businesses whether they notice a difference. Most importantly, let’s have the conversation using evidence rather than assumptions.
If it doesn’t work, we can say we tried it and have the figures to prove it.
If it does work, we may have discovered one relatively simple tool that can help bring more people back into Woking.
The future of the high street won’t be decided by parking charges alone. It will depend on dozens of factors and hundreds of decisions made by councils, businesses, landlords and residents. But successful regeneration often comes from lots of relatively small changes working together.
Woking doesn’t need people to drive into town simply so we can collect a parking charge from them.
We need them to park, get out of their cars and spend time in our town.
That is where the real value lies.
#RethinkWokingParking
Would cheaper parking make you visit Woking town centre more often, or encourage you to stay longer when you did? If the answer is yes, share this article and let’s start a proper conversation about using parking as part of Woking’s regeneration.