Horley's 86-space High Street car park goes to open market sale; Redhill's 285-space Gloucester Road car park gets a study for council-owned affordable homes.
Two busy town-centre car parks in Redhill and Horley could become housing, under plans that went to Reigate and Banstead Borough Council’s Executive on Thursday night. The council owns both sites. Its priority is homes it would keep and let at affordable and social rents.
The sites are Gloucester Road car park in Redhill and the High Street car park in Horley. Nothing is being sold or closed yet. The Executive report asks for advisers to be hired to work out the best way to build on each one. Any sale or closure would need a further Executive decision, public consultation and consent from the new East Surrey Council.
Updated 1 October: the Executive’s decision record, published on 28 September, shows it chose Option 1 for Horley, a conditional open market sale, against officers’ advice. It agreed the officers’ recommendation for Gloucester Road. Full story on the Horley decision.
The Executive met on 24 September. Its decision notice had not been published on the council’s decision register by Friday afternoon, so we cannot yet say which options were agreed.
The two car parks
| Gloucester Road, Redhill | High Street, Horley | |
|---|---|---|
| Parking spaces | 285 | 86 |
| Site size | 0.76 hectares | 0.28 hectares |
| Parking income 2025/26 | £180,700 | £67,300 |
| Value as a car park | £647,300 | £232,000 |
| Homes in the 2019 local plan | about 60 (or 30 plus offices) | about 40, plus up to 1,000 sq m of shops or leisure |
The income figures exclude season tickets and contract parking. The Horley figure represents almost 38,000 parking sessions a year, the report says.
Both car parks are already allocated for development in the council’s 2019 Development Management Plan, as policies RTC6 (Redhill) and HOR1 (Horley). For Gloucester Road, the report says architects’ capacity studies “indicate that significantly more homes could be accommodated on the car park than the policy suggests”. It does not give a number.
Why the council wants to build
The report makes the case in three figures and one complaint:
- house prices in the borough were 10.54 times incomes in 2024
- approaches to the council for homelessness help rose from 1,385 in 2022/23 to over 1,900 in 2024/25
- the council wants homes it owns and keeps, let at affordable or social rent, at higher levels than planning policy would require
- housing associations are no longer reliably buying the affordable homes that developers build under section 106 agreements, the report says, because they are spending on their existing homes instead
What is proposed for each
Gloucester Road, Redhill. External advisers would test feasibility and viability and compare ways of building. Those include the council building itself, a joint venture or other partnership, or selling. The preferred route would become an outline business case.
High Street, Horley. The report set out three options:
- sell on the open market to the highest bidder, with conditions
- sell by competitive tender, restricted to housing associations and developers who can deliver affordable and social rent homes
- go through the same full appraisal as Gloucester Road (the officers’ recommendation)
The report records that the Portfolio Holder for Finance and Assets would prefer the Horley site “to be sold and for homes to be brought forward by a third party”. It also proposes adding 54 High Street, a former café next to the car park and the pedestrian subway, to the Horley site. The council took possession of it in May 2024 and the report describes it as dilapidated.
Who uses these car parks now
The report lists the users any scheme would have to deal with:
- Horley: three local schools use the High Street car park for drop-off and pick-up on weekdays
- Horley: the title requires Network Rail’s approval for any development, and access to the railway must be kept
- Redhill: the car park takes overnight lorry parking, and the local plan requires that to be replaced elsewhere
- Redhill: Redhill market traders park there every Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and for a week before Christmas
- Redhill: St Matthew’s Church of England Primary School borders the site on two sides
Both car parks are covered by an off-street parking order. Releasing either for building would mean revoking or changing that order, which is likely to need statutory consultation, the report says.
What it means for you
Nothing changes at either car park yet, and both remain open. The report says the next steps are:
- advisers appointed and business cases drawn up for each site
- an assessment of town-centre parking in Redhill and Horley, to show where displaced cars could go
- public consultation before any decision to declare either site surplus
- a further Executive decision, then consent from East Surrey Council, which takes over from the borough on 1 April 2027
No timetable is given for any of these steps. If you park in either town centre, our guide to parking in Reigate, Redhill and Horley lists the other car parks. The Executive’s decision is now published. We will report the consultation when it opens.
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