Abbey Drive at Laleham, Dumsey Meadow at Shepperton and two Sunbury car parks become free with an 11 hour limit from 8 September, not the 30 minutes proposed.
Four Spelthorne council car parks stop charging on Tuesday 8 September 2026, and drivers will be allowed to stay in them for up to 11 hours, not the 30 minutes the council proposed last December. Spelthorne Borough Council confirmed it has made the Off-Street Parking Places Amendment No.3 Order 2026 in two public notices published on 13 August, with the second notice carrying the new Staines tariffs that start the same day.
The four car parks are Abbey Drive at Laleham Park, Laleham, Dumsey Meadow at Shepperton by Chertsey Bridge, and the Old Bathing Station and Green Street in Sunbury-on-Thames. None of the four is in Staines-upon-Thames itself. See the correction note at the foot of this article. All four currently give the first hour free, then charge £2 for up to two hours and £4 beyond that, according to the council’s own pages for Abbey Drive, Dumsey Meadow, the Old Bathing Station and Sunbury Park and Green Street, which were last updated on 11 August and still show the charges. They are not free yet. Anyone who objects to the made Order has until 4 September 2026 to send representations to the council at Knowle Green.
What changed between the proposal and the Order
The Notice of Proposals dated 12 December 2025 said the four car parks would move to “Schedule 3 Free parking places with 30 minutes maximum stay”, with the Order coming into operation on 16 July 2026. It also proposed to cut the free first hour at every other recreation ground car park in the borough to 30 minutes and add a paid one-hour tariff point. The council’s own January news release listed both changes, and extended the consultation to 26 January 2026.
The notice of the made Order lists twelve changes, not thirteen. The four car parks now go into Schedule 3 “with 11 hour maximum stay”, and the line cutting the free first hour to 30 minutes has gone. The council has not published a report explaining the representations it received or why the two items changed; the October 2025 committee decision delegated that job to officers.
The Lower Sunbury Residents’ Association had objected to the 30-minute limit in an item on 23 January 2026, pointing out that a notice displayed in the Green Street car park said parking would become free while the Order proposed a 30-minute stay followed by a penalty charge, which it said was no use to park visitors, churchgoers or shoppers.
The other first-hour-free car parks keep their current tariff, on the council’s own pages at least: Orchard Meadow, the Broadway in Laleham and Manor Park in Shepperton all still list the first hour at nil, £2 up to two hours and £4 beyond. Laleham Park and Thameside charges 50p for the first hour and £8 for over four hours and is not touched by this Order.
Why the council is doing it
The officer report to the Corporate Policy and Resources Committee on 13 October 2025 is blunt about the money. Seven recreation ground car parks with a free first hour, Abbey Drive, Green Street, Orchard Meadow, Laleham Broadway, Manor Park, Old Bathing Station and Dumsey Meadow, had “a combined operational deficit of £184k”. The report put the total deficit of the nil-charge tariffs at £231,000 a year, business rates across all the council’s car parks at £421,000 a year and other operating costs at £799,000.
Business rates are the reason free beats cheap. The Valuation Office Agency values a car park on the tariff it charges and the income that should produce, “as opposed to the actual income achieved”, so a car park with no tariff carries lower or no rates. The report set out three options: remove the free first hour; failing that, shorten it; failing that, take the worst-performing car parks out of the Order altogether. Removing a car park would not cut staffing costs, it said, but would free enforcement officers for car parks where they generate more income. The Staines tariff changes were expected to raise about £36,000 a year.
The committee resolved on 13 October to recommend that Council approve the proposals and authorise the Group Head Neighbourhood Services to “consider and address any objections and to amend the proposals if necessary, following the public consultation”. The report’s author was Bruno Barbosa, the council’s parking services operational manager.
Staines town centre: what the new tariffs are
The second notice sets one short-stay tariff for Elmsleigh Road, the Elmsleigh multi-storey, Elmsleigh Surface and Riverside Surface, and one long-stay tariff for Bridge Street and Kingston Road, all Monday to Saturday, with a flat £2 from 7pm to midnight and £2 all day on Sunday.
Short stay from 8 September: £1.40 for up to an hour, £2.40 for two, £3.40 for three, £5 for four, £7 for five and £12 for over five hours. Against the Elmsleigh multi-storey page that is 10p more for an hour, the same for two hours, 20p less for three, 20p more for four, £1 more for five and 20p less for a full day. It is the four and five hour bands that move.
Long stay from 8 September: £1.50 for an hour, £2.60 for two, £3.70 for three, £5.20 for four, £6 for five and £9 for over five hours. Kingston Road, the 196-space car park nearest the station, currently charges £2.50, £3.50, £4.50, £5.50 and £8 for the same bands, so a commuter’s day goes up £1 and a four-hour stay by 70p. Our roadworks and travel page carries the full side-by-side table.
Two rules in the Order matter as much as the prices. Charges are now stated as being per parking session, and there is a new line that no return is permitted within the same charging period, which the council says is “to avoid misuse of lower cost initial tariff points”. On the face of it, buying an hour, driving out and coming straight back for another hour is what the line is written to stop. Motorcycles remain free but only in designated bays. The Order also enables virtual contract permits, tidies the staff and councillor parking rules and redraws the map for the Spelthorne Leisure Centre car park at Knowle Green.
What it means for you
- Using Sunbury Park, the Old Bathing Station, Dumsey Meadow or Abbey Drive: keep paying until 7 September. From 8 September there is no charge and you can stay up to 11 hours. Opening hours are unchanged on the council pages, 7am to 7pm at three of them and 6am to 7pm at Dumsey Meadow, so an all-day stay still has to fit inside the gates.
- Parking in Staines for a morning: one and two hour stays barely move (10p and nothing). It is a four or five hour stop, a long lunch or a cinema trip plus shopping, that costs up to £1 more in the short-stay car parks.
- Commuting from Kingston Road or Bridge Street: budget £9 a day instead of £8 from 8 September. Season ticket prices are not changed by these notices.
- Popping back: do not buy two short tickets in one visit; the no-return rule starts the same day.
- Objecting: representations must reach the Group Head Neighbourhood Services, Spelthorne Borough Council, Knowle Green, Staines TW18 1XB by 4 September 2026. The Order and schedules can be inspected at the offices, 9am to 5pm Monday to Thursday and 9am to noon on Friday.
The council’s individual car park pages are being updated piecemeal, so the price on the page and the price on the machine may not match for a few weeks. The made Order is the version that will be enforced from 8 September; the December proposal is not.
Correction, 10 September 2026
This article originally said Abbey Drive car park is in Staines. It is not. The council’s own Parking Order 2020 list of schedules gives it as “Abbey Drive, Laleham Park”, and Ordnance Survey addressing puts Abbey Drive in Laleham, about two miles south of Staines town centre. None of the four car parks made free by the Order is in Staines-upon-Thames: they are at Laleham, Shepperton and Sunbury. The tariff changes described further down this article do apply to the Staines town-centre car parks. The headline and the text have been amended and this note added rather than the error being removed silently.
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