Staines masterplan: 3,282 homes, have your say by 24 Aug

Anyone who wants a say in how Staines town centre is rebuilt has until 11.59pm on Monday 24 August 2026 to give it. Spelthorne Borough Council’s emerging Staines Masterplan is out for comment, and the exhibition boards behind it set out, site by site, where 3,282 new homes are expected to go. (Spelthorne Borough Council, Have your say on the future of Staines town centre, 20 July 2026)

The headline number is not new: the Spelthorne Local Plan adopted on 17 March 2026 already allocates the sites. What the masterplan adds is the shape of it, and that is what is open to comment now.

How to respond, and by when

Comments go through the council’s engagement hub at stainesmasterplan.commonplace.is, which carries every exhibition board and a short survey. It closes at 11.59pm on Monday 24 August.

The boards are also on display in person at the Library Hub in the Elmsleigh Centre until the same date. The hub is at Unit MSU 2, Staines-upon-Thames TW18 4QB, open 9.30am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday, 7pm on Tuesdays, 9.30am to 5pm on Saturdays and closed on Sundays. (Surrey County Council, Staines Library) There is a certain neatness to reading the plans inside the building the plans would replace.

Questions go to staines.masterplan@spelthorne.gov.uk.

Where the homes would go

The exhibition puts a figure against six sites.

The Elmsleigh Centre and the land around it carries 1,500 of them, close to half the town centre total, alongside extra shopping and commercial space and a new green link down to the river. Two Rivers North would become a new neighbourhood of 800 homes with shops, squares and a tree lined walking and cycling route through the middle. London Road takes 580, with retail frontage and a linear park linking Kingston Road to Moormede and Birch Green.

The three smaller sites are more particular. The Oast House, a listed former brewery building off Kingston Road, would gain 170 homes and become a base for creative workshops, makerspaces and small scale arts and community uses. Staines Business Park takes 100 in what the boards call an urban village of townhouses and small apartment buildings, with views to St Mary’s Church preserved. The former Debenhams building takes 70 to 80, with the facade and ground floor shops kept and a two storey penthouse extension set back behind a terrace. (Staines Masterplan virtual exhibition boards, Spelthorne Borough Council, July 2026)

Those six come to about 3,225 between them, against the Local Plan’s 3,282 for the town centre as a whole, and the council is explicit that masterplans are indicative: they set principles and show one way the sites could come forward, not a fixed design.

The Elmsleigh decision that is genuinely open

The most consequential thing in the consultation is not a number. On the Elmsleigh Centre, the council sets out two scenarios and asks which people prefer.

Keeping the existing centre buildings and building around them is, in the council’s own words, less likely to disrupt existing retailers during the change, more likely to be financially viable, and more likely to result in taller buildings, with lower levels of public car parking.

Replacing them is likely to mean lower building heights and more public car parking, but it would require considerable long term investment from a delivery partner and is more likely to disrupt existing retailers while the work goes on.

That is a straight trade between height, parking and shop disruption, and it is the question most worth answering if you only answer one.

What else is in it

Homes are the bulk of the plan, but not the visible part of it. The masterplan proposes a new bus station near the existing one, with covered waiting space and live passenger information, and a new walking and cycling bridge over the railway linking the town centre and riverfront to the station, Eclipse Leisure Centre and Knowle Green. The town centre is boxed in on all four sides by railways or rivers, and the south east, where most residents live, currently has to use Laleham Road or Kingston Road to get in. The railway station itself would get an improved southern entrance and more space at the northern one, which is worth reading alongside our page on Staines train times to London.

On the riverfront, Memorial Gardens would be redesigned and extended onto the current car park, the Old Fire Station renovated as a cafe or community space, and the arches under Staines Bridge opened up for small independent businesses. The plan claims over 3 hectares, about 7 acres, of new green space across the town centre, which it describes as more than four football pitches.

The A308 along South Street, Thames Street and Clarence Street, a dual carriageway the boards call noisy, difficult to cross and unpleasant for walking and cycling, would be changed over time with better crossings, street trees and space taken back from traffic. Anything on that scale will be felt while it happens, and our roadworks and travel page is where those closures land.

Flood risk is addressed rather than dodged. The boards map flood zones 3a and 3b across the town centre and state that at Elmsleigh the new homes would go in the areas of lowest flood risk.

What it means for you

If you live in the town centre or the streets around it, the height question is the one that will change your view, your light and your parking, and it is formally undecided. Both Elmsleigh scenarios are on the table until this consultation closes.

If you shop in Staines, the plan keeps and expands retail space rather than trading it away, but under either scenario the Elmsleigh works would run for years. The retention option is the one the council says is less disruptive to existing shops.

If you drive in, note that the Bridge Street car park site is earmarked for expanded gardens and new riverfront uses, and that public parking levels differ between the two Elmsleigh scenarios. That is a detail worth commenting on before it is settled rather than after.

If you are buying or selling here, 3,282 town centre homes over 14 years is a significant addition to supply in a borough where the average price fell 3.5% in the year to May 2026.

If you want to object or support, do it through the survey rather than informally. This is the stage where comments shape the document; once the masterplan is adopted it guides how individual planning applications are decided, and those are the ones we track on our Staines planning news page.

The council has already run one round of this. A day long community design workshop, held on Saturday 18 April 2026, put residents into groups to draw proposals for four key sites, and the composite drawings from that day are reproduced on the boards. Cllr John Turner, chair of the council’s Environment and Sustainability Committee, said the exhibition was “a great opportunity for people to tell us what they like, what they think could be improved and what they would like to see in the years ahead”, and that all feedback would be carefully considered as the masterplan is developed.

Eleven days remain to add to it.