Go to any town or city centre and you will often find it expensive to park. This is in order to take advantage of those from the outside coming into the area, offering the local council some much-needed funds. Guildford is no exception on that front, but it has been problematic for those who work or run businesses in the area. Now it looks as though a way forward has been found that will offer support to local businesses, offering staff who work during the night an affordable way to park whilst they head into the town centre and go about their regular business whilst there.
What’s Happened
For some time now, Guildford residents have been finding it prohibitively expensive to park their cars in the town centre overnight. This is obviously tricky for people who work in the likes of restaurants, pubs and clubs and therefore need their car to be in one place for a prolonged period of time. There have been complaints from those in that situation, asking Guildford Council to do something in order to make it easier for them to be able to drive into work without having to pay a fortune for the privilege. Now a new scheme has been launched to find out if it is viable to do so.
Guildford Borough Council have confirmed that a new scheme is being launched to provide both affordable and convenient parking options for those who work in the town centre during evenings. It is a collaboration with Experience Guildford, the Business Improvement District, giving those that pay the levy to BID the chance to apply for a discounted parking permit that will let staff park between 3pm and 7am seven days a week. The hope is that it will support the night-time economy of the town, allowing the staff to keep working without fear of the cost of parking.
Maximum of 100 Permits Initially
In the first phase of the scheme, Guildford Borough Council is seeing 100 permits being released for those working in clubs, restaurants, pubs and other night-time venues in the area. They will cost £150 each, whilst each of the permits will be linked to a specific vehicle registration number. That means that they will be non-transferable and will instead have to be used on the exact cars that have been awarded one of the permits. The £150 fee is per year and will need to be prepaid, as well as being non-refundable in the instance that someone no longer needs it.
The trial period will run from the June of 2025 through to the end of May 2026, during which time a maximum of 100 permits will be given out to workers. As well as requiring the permit to be attached to a specific car, there are also a given number of car parks that will accept the use of the permits from the drivers. They are as follows:
- Bedford Road MSCP
- Bedford Road Surface
- Bright Hill
- G Live
- High Street
- Leapale Road
- Mary Road
- Millbrook
In other words, if you try to park anywhere else in Guildford other than those parking areas, or you are looking to park your car outside of the hours of 3pm to 7am, you will still need to get a ticket from the machine or using the car parking application on your phone.
What the Council Has Said
Speaking about the matter, Councillor Catherine Houston, who is the Lead Councillor for Commercial Services, said that she was ‘delighted’ that the Guildford Borough Council has been able to work together with Experience Guildford in order to find a way of delivering a trial parking scheme. She said, “We believe it will greatly benefit our night-time economy by providing affordable parking options when public transport is not available. We encourage all eligible businesses to apply and take advantage of this opportunity for their staff.”
It is, she said, a ‘tangible example’ of the manner in which collaboration can be used to ‘drive change’ as well as ‘achieve positive outcomes’. The idea is to see what sort of an impact the scheme has on the town’s night-time economy, with a specific eye on those who work in areas such as the leisure, retail and hospitality sectors. If it makes their lives tangibly better, then the long-term plan will be to see more such permits rolled out across Guildford, allowing other businesses to take advantage of the ability to park between 3pm and 7am without having to buy tickets for each car park.