Fairer Parking for People Who Work in Farnham#

Farnham depends on people working in its shops, restaurants, offices, services and other businesses.

Some can walk, cycle or use public transport. Others need to drive.

For those workers, particularly part-time and shift workers, parking can become a significant additional cost of simply coming to work.

This is a living page. It may contain errors and will be continuously updated as new information is shared. If you spot something that needs correcting, please let us know.

On this page#

What does it currently cost?
Could worker parking be more flexible?
Why we think this is worth exploring
What about students travelling into Farnham?
What we’re hearing from workers
What do you think?

What does it currently cost?#

The cheapest standard Farnham season ticket is currently £963 per year at Riverside. Someone paying the £6.80 daily rate for 220 working days would spend around £1,496 per year. That second figure is an illustration — not everyone drives every day — but it shows the scale of the cost for regular commuters.

Season tickets and permits

Ordinary season tickets do not guarantee a parking space. Contract permits do guarantee a designated-car-park space.

Car park	Annual	Half-year	Monthly
Riverside 1, 2 & 3	£963	£576	£96
St James	£1,122	£672	£112
Upper Hart	£1,447	£870	£145
Waggon Yard	£1,773	£1,062	£177

Contract permit	Annual	Half-year
South Street	£1,612	£966
Upper Hart	£1,670	£1,002

Source: Waverley Borough Council — car park permits

Daily parking charges

Car park	All-day charge	Spaces
Riverside 1	£6.80	59
Riverside 2	£6.80	95
Riverside 3	£6.80	197
St James	£6.80	83
Upper Hart	£10.00	325
Waggon Yard	£10.00	236
Brightwells Yard	£10.00	170
Central	£24.40	268
Lower Hart	£24.40	236

Sources: Riverside 1 · Riverside 2 · Riverside 3 · St James · Upper Hart · Waggon Yard · Brightwells Yard · Central · Lower Hart

Could worker parking be more flexible?#

We think it is worth exploring whether existing parking arrangements could provide better options for people who work in Farnham.

Rather than creating one permit that tries to suit everyone, different options could reflect how people actually work.

Worker Permit — for people who regularly drive to work

A lower-cost monthly or annual permit for people who can show that they work in Farnham.

It could:

be available only to people working in Farnham
operate in selected car parks where capacity allows
be capped if necessary to protect general parking availability
provide a cheaper alternative to paying the daily rate
not guarantee a parking space

This could work particularly well for people who drive into Farnham most working days.

Shared Business Permit — for businesses with shift workers

Instead of every employee needing their own permit, a business could buy a smaller number of permits and share them between registered employees.

For example:

6 registered employees + 2 permits = up to 2 employee vehicles parked at any one time.

When one employee finishes their shift and leaves, another registered employee could use that permit.

This could particularly help shops, restaurants and other businesses with rotating or part-time staff.

Flexible Worker Pass — for people who only drive some days

Annual permits do not always make financial sense for someone working two or three days each week.

A flexible pass could allow workers to buy discounted bundles of parking days instead.

For example: 10 days · 20 days · 50 days

A parking day would only be used when the worker actually needs it.

This could suit part-time workers, hybrid workers and people with irregular shifts.

One scheme, different working patterns#

The three options could form part of the same worker parking scheme:

If you…	Possible option
Drive to work most days	Worker Permit
Employ people on different shifts	Shared Business Permit
Only drive to work some days	Flexible Worker Pass

The aim is simple: make the cost of parking better reflect how often someone actually needs to park.

Where could worker permits operate?

Any worker parking scheme would need to consider the wider parking needs of Farnham.

That could mean:

using car parks with available capacity
limiting the number of worker permits available
excluding locations already under significant pressure
reviewing occupancy before expanding the scheme
adjusting availability as parking patterns change

Worker permits would therefore provide access to eligible parking, not a guaranteed space.

What would it cost?

The right price is something the councils would need to determine. It would need to consider:

existing parking charges
car park occupancy
the cost to the council
potential changes in parking revenue
what represents a meaningful saving for workers

The objective should be a price that genuinely helps people working in Farnham without creating an unreasonable cost elsewhere.

Why we think this is worth exploring#

This idea isn’t starting from scratch. There are already several useful examples:

Waverley already has an employment-based parking permit in Milford.
Waverley already manages digital permits through MiPermit.
West Byfleet has a parking permit specifically for people who work locally.
Surrey already encourages Park & Stride from Riverside.
Surrey already encourages drivers to park on the side of Farnham from which they arrive.

These don’t prove that any particular scheme will work in Farnham. They do show that many of the individual ideas already exist.

Waverley already has a worker permit

Waverley already operates a special parking permit in Milford for people who work locally. Applicants must be an employer or employee of a business in Milford and provide evidence of this. The currently published annual price is £127.

That doesn’t mean a Farnham permit should cost £127. Parking demand and circumstances are different.

But it establishes an important principle: Waverley already has a location-specific, employment-based parking permit within its existing parking system. A Farnham worker permit would not require Waverley to invent the concept from scratch.

Source: Waverley Borough Council — car park permits

Could MiPermit support it?

Waverley already manages its digital parking permits through MiPermit. Permits are linked to vehicle registrations, and Waverley already allows permit holders to change the registered vehicle through their MiPermit account.

That raises an interesting possibility for businesses employing part-time or shift workers. Could a business hold one or more permits and assign them to whichever eligible employees are working that day?

For example: 6 registered employees, 2 business permits, maximum 2 vehicles parked at once. That could give businesses flexibility without increasing the number of parking spaces being used.

We don’t yet know whether MiPermit can support this exact arrangement. That is one of the questions we want to explore.

Sources: Waverley — digital permits · Waverley — car park permits

Riverside could be particularly interesting

Riverside 1, 2 and 3 provide 351 parking spaces between them. Surrey has already improved Riverside Walk to make walking and cycling between these car parks and the town centre easier. Surrey also encourages motorists arriving from the north and east to use Riverside rather than driving further through the town.

That makes Riverside an obvious place to look at for worker parking and Park & Stride.

But there is an important piece of information missing: how full is Riverside during a normal working day? Before any additional permits could be considered there, occupancy data showing how much capacity actually exists would be needed.

Sources: Surrey — Farnham Infrastructure Programme · Waverley — Riverside car parks · Surrey — Farnham LCWIP

Park on your side of town

Surrey already encourages motorists to choose parking based on the direction they arrive from:

North or east: Riverside
West: Lower Hart or Upper Hart
South: Farnham Maltings or Station

The reason is straightforward: it reduces the need for vehicles to drive around or through the town centre simply to reach a car park. A future worker parking scheme could reinforce the same principle.

Source: Surrey — Farnham Infrastructure Programme

West Byfleet — nearby precedent

Woking Borough Council operates a season ticket at Woodlands Avenue, West Byfleet, specifically for people who work locally. Applicants must provide proof of employment within West Byfleet, contact details, and vehicle registration, make and model. The permit is restricted to Woodlands Avenue car park and does not guarantee a space.

This is useful evidence that employment-based parking permits are not unusual or administratively unrealistic.

Sources: Woking — car park season tickets · Woodlands Avenue conditions of use

What about Park & Ride?

Park & Ride isn’t a new idea for Farnham.

The 2021 Farnham Optimised Infrastructure Plan looked at potential Park & Ride or Park & Stride locations around Guildford Road, Shepherd & Flock, Coxbridge, and Odiham Road. However, further work identified significant technical and environmental problems with several sites.

Another major problem was public transport. The potential sites did not have sufficiently frequent existing bus services, and dedicated Park & Ride buses were considered unlikely to be viable.

Farnham Town Council also raised concerns about whether a traditional Park & Ride model suited Farnham’s geography — noting the problem of asking motorists to drive further away from their destination before boarding a bus.

So we should not simply assume that building a large Park & Ride is the answer.

But the underlying idea remains interesting: can some journeys end outside the most congested parts of Farnham, with people completing the final part by walking, cycling or public transport? Riverside Park & Stride already applies that principle.

Smaller peripheral parking areas, existing car parks, Park & Stride and connections with existing bus services may prove more practical than one large traditional Park & Ride. These options need further exploration before we can say whether they would work.

Sources: Surrey — Farnham Infrastructure Programme · OIP Consultation Report (PDF)

Parking matters to Farnham's economy

Parking has been an issue for Farnham businesses for many years.

In Waverley’s 2019 Car Parking Strategic Review, every respondent to its Farnham consultation considered parking availability and pricing either important or very important. The review also recorded concerns about traffic, pollution, pedestrian movement and the relationship between parking and Farnham’s independent retail economy.

This was a consultation sample, not every Farnham resident or business — but it demonstrates that the relationship between parking and the town’s economy is longstanding.

Source: Waverley Car Parking Strategic Review 2019, section 7.4

Fairer parking and less unnecessary traffic

Making worker parking fairer doesn’t have to mean encouraging more traffic into central Farnham.

Where walking, cycling or public transport is practical, those options should continue to be supported. But some people will still need to drive.

For those journeys, the question becomes: can we help workers park affordably without requiring them to drive through the most congested parts of Farnham first?

Park & Stride, parking on the side of town from which people arrive, and better public transport connections could all form part of that answer.

Sources: Surrey — Farnham Infrastructure Programme · Surrey — Farnham LCWIP

What about students travelling into Farnham?#

Students who commute into Farnham create a similar type of parking demand to people travelling into the town for work: they often need somewhere to leave a vehicle for several hours.

There is already a specific arrangement for UCA Farnham students. Waverley Borough Council offers eligible UCA students and staff discounted term-time parking at Riverside 3 — approximately a 15-minute walk from campus on a paved, lit route.

Farnham Voice is therefore not currently investigating a separate student parking scheme. Instead, we want to understand how well the existing arrangement works, how much capacity it uses, and whether students are still having to park elsewhere.

This is also directly relevant to the worker parking question. If public car parks such as Riverside 3 are to provide more affordable long-stay parking for workers, we need to understand the demands already placed on them by students, workers, residents and visitors before drawing any conclusions.

Are you a student? See our parking explainer →

What we’re hearing from workers#

We’ve started speaking to people who work in Farnham. Here’s what they’ve told us so far:

Permit durations don’t match shift patterns. The available options are either a full day or six hours — but many shifts are eight to ten hours. A ten-hour permit doesn’t exist.
Some workers have stopped driving altogether because parking is too expensive or too stressful. They use public transport instead, which can add significant time to their commute.
Workers set alarms to renew short permits mid-shift because it’s cheaper to buy multiple four-hour blocks than a single day rate. That takes time out of the working day and adds unnecessary stress.
Loading bay times don’t work for all businesses. Some can’t park anywhere close to unload during the hours they need to.
There is no allocated parking for businesses in the town centre. Workers compete for the same spaces as shoppers and visitors.
Many workers are paid hourly. Parking costs eat directly into their take-home pay.
Digital-only payment doesn’t work for everyone. Older workers and customers don’t always use apps like RingGo. A pay-on-exit option could work better for some.

These are early conversations. As more workers and businesses share their experience, this section will grow.

What do you think?#

These are options for investigation, not finished proposals.

We want to understand what would actually help people who work and run businesses in Farnham.

If you work in Farnham: how often do you drive to work, where do you currently park, and what would make parking more practical?

If you run a business: would a shared permit help your staff, and how many employees would realistically need to park at the same time?

The answers can help establish whether there is enough demand to take a detailed proposal forward.

Share your experience

What we still need to understand

We are building the evidence needed to write an informed brief — one that can represent the community’s asks clearly and credibly when we petition the town.

The petition will be shaped by what workers and businesses tell us — how they currently travel, where they park, what they pay, whether parking affects recruitment or retention, and which options would actually help.

That is the evidence we need to gather. The asks need to come from real experience, not assumptions.

Everything else — car park occupancy data, permit capacity, transport modelling — is the council’s responsibility to assess once a clear case has been made. Our job is to make sure that case is difficult to dismiss.

Sources