From 21 September, Horley gets an hour of free parking for as long as the High Street works last. Reform UK welcomes it and is calling for it to be made permanent.
Reigate and Banstead Borough Council has confirmed that there will be one hour of free parking in Horley Town Centre car parks, from 21 September 2026 for the duration of the High Street works.
Reform UK welcomes the decision and gives the Borough Council credit for it. Horley’s businesses have kept their doors open through months of disruption, and a measure that brings shoppers back through them is worth having.
The investment deserves to pay off
The Delivering Change in Horley Town Centre programme is a £3 million scheme delivered by Surrey County Council and Reigate and Banstead, with support from Horley Town Council, Network Rail and the UK Government. It is the sort of long-term investment in the town that Cllr Andy Lynch has argued for over many years, and Horley will be the better for it: wider pavements, safer crossings, new planting and a High Street built around people rather than through traffic.
The works are not finished. Of eleven phases, the final two are still ahead: Phase 10, resurfacing between Consort Way East and Yattendon Road with raised tables for pedestrian crossings, which Surrey County Council puts at around eight weeks, and Phase 11, resurfacing and repaving the entrance to the High Street Car Park, at around three weeks.
The point of spending £3 million is a town centre that thrives afterwards. That is exactly where the free hour comes in, and exactly where the current arrangement falls short.
Temporary help ends at the wrong moment
Free parking for the duration of the works is support delivered while the town is at its lowest ebb and withdrawn at the moment recovery begins.
Once a customer has found somewhere else to buy their coffee or their birthday cards, that habit takes months to break, and Horley’s independent businesses do not have the reserves a national chain has. The free hour is the cheapest measure available for filling a High Street that the taxpayer has just paid to improve. Removing it in the first months of the new town centre would waste much of what the scheme has bought.
Why it must be settled now
On 31 March 2027, Surrey County Council and all eleven district and borough councils, will be dissolved and East Surrey Council will take over as our local authority.
Reigate and Banstead can run a temporary scheme within its own budget, but it cannot bind a council that does not yet exist. Unless the free hour is written into East Surrey’s plans during this shadow period, it will simply not be carried across.
Reform UK is therefore making the case in all three places where it can be settled:
- Reigate and Banstead Borough Council should extend the free hour to the end of its own existence in March 2027 and recommend formally that East Surrey continues it.
- Cllr Andy Lynch, Leader of the Reform UK at Surrey County Council, is making that case at County Hall for Surrey to back the free hour of town centre parking in Horley on a permanent basis.
- Cllr David Heaver, Reform UK Councillor for Horley East at East Surrey Council,is asking the new unitary authority to write the free hour into its first budget for 2027/28.
Get in touch
Reform UK wants to hear from residents and businesses in Horley. If the free hour changes how often you come into town, say so. If you run a business here, what a permanent free hour would be worth to you carries more weight with a council than any speech.
Write to Cllr Andy Lynch at andy.lynch@surreycc.gov.uk or Cllr David Heaver at cllr.david.heaver@eastsurrey.gov.uk. Evidence will be presented attributed or anonymised, entirely as you prefer.
One hour free is a good start. Permanent is the finish.
