Brook car park heads for demolition
Plus next week’s council decisions, a wave of new HMO applications, a Cliffe house with orchard views for now, and the weekend’s events
Medway Council is preparing to demolish the Brook multistorey car park in Chatham, a step that would remove nearly 500 town centre parking spaces, with no commitment to replace them elsewhere. We look at what cabinet is being asked to approve next week, why demolition might be unavoidable, and what the decision reveals about how parking is quietly being eroded in Chatham, alongside a roundup of council business, planning, events, and local sport...
The end of Brook car park, and the quiet erosion of parking in Chatham
For years, the Brook multistorey car park has been one of Chatham town centre’s more stubborn problems. Big, central, and hard to miss, it has also been widely regarded as unpleasant to use, poorly maintained, and a magnet for antisocial behaviour. It is not widely used, and few would seriously argue that it is the sort of infrastructure a place that styles itself as the centre of Medway should rely on.
Next week, Medway Council’s cabinet is expected to take another step towards bringing that era to a close. Councillors will be asked to approve decisions that would enable the council to move toward demolishing the Brook car park and redeveloping the site for housing. On paper, it looks like a neat regeneration story. In practice, it exposes some less comfortable questions about parking, priorities, and what keeps quietly disappearing from Chatham town centre.
The site
The Brook car park contains 467 spaces, making it one of the larger remaining car parks close to Chatham’s core. Its reputation has been earned over time. The structure is run-down, often unhygienic, and frequently associated with drug use and antisocial behaviour. Many people avoid it unless they have no better option.
That helps explain why there has been little visible nostalgia for the place. It is not loved, but size still matters. Losing nearly 500 spaces from a central location is not a minor tweak, even if those spaces come with the smell of neglect baked in.
The decision
What Cabinet is being asked to approve next Tuesday is not a planning application for housing. Instead, it is the machinery that enables redevelopment.
Councillors are being asked to commit £400,000 of council capital receipts to fund residential design work up to the planning application stage and to approve the direct appointment of Medway Development Company, the council-owned regeneration company, to manage the project. If a separate funding bid succeeds, that council contribution would unlock £1.5m from the government’s Brownfield Land Release Fund, which would pay for demolition and enabling works.
This is a decision about momentum rather than detail. It does not decide what gets built. It decides that something will happen.
The background
The car park was formally declared surplus to requirements last year as part of a wider council property review, driven largely by financial pressure rather than a sudden burst of enthusiasm for Chatham town centre living. Officers concluded that the structure is ageing and that keeping it operational would likely mean significant maintenance spending within the next decade.
More awkwardly, the review found that the cost of demolishing it exceeds its value, leaving the site with a negative balance sheet position. In plain terms, the car park is worth less than the cost of getting rid of it. That fact underpins almost everything that follows.
Demolition is not a later phase or a nice-to-have. It is the price of admission. Until the structure is removed, redevelopment is effectively impossible.
The wider picture
On its own, the case for losing the Brook car park is easy to make. The problem is what it adds up to.
The Brook is not the only town-centre car park under pressure. Other sites are facing redevelopment, while some areas, including parts of the waterfront, have already been built over in recent years. Taken together, that has steadily reduced central parking capacity in Chatham.
There is no published commitment to replace Brook’s 467 spaces elsewhere.
That sits uncomfortably with Chatham’s role as Medway’s primary centre, expected to absorb shopping, work, culture, and civic life. Policy increasingly leans on active travel and reduced car use, but the reality on the ground is that Chatham still serves a car-dependent catchment, particularly in the evenings and for people travelling in from elsewhere in Medway.
Next week’s decision is framed as procedural, driven by funding deadlines and procurement rules. That is true, as far as it goes. But demolition is not a neutral act. Once The Brook is gone, those spaces are gone for good, whatever eventually rises in their place.
The Brook may be an easy site to let go of. The harder question is whether parking in Chatham is being reshaped as part of an actual plan, or simply whittled away one awkward, unloved car park at a time.
Council matters
Meetings next week:
- Tuesday: Cabinet meets to approve the draft budget, a new River Medway strategy, a suicide and self-harm prevention strategy, and lots more.
- Wednesday: Planning Committee will decide on 28 homes at the Rochester end of Intra.
- Thursday: Health and Wellbeing Board gathers to discuss the adult social care strategy, Medway's Marmot Place partnership, and more.
New planning applications:
- 100 homes are proposed south of Higham Road and east of Buckland Road in Cliffe.
- 19 homes are proposed off Lords Wood Lane on a patch of land next to North Dane Wood.
- It's a HMO bonanza this week, with new applications for Canterbury Street, Copenhagen Road, Featherby Road, Gads Hill, Kingswood Road, Stopford Road in Gillingham, Railway Street in Chatham, Maidstone Road in Rochester, and Hone Street in Strood.
In brief
🏥 NHS Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board are forecasting a £200m deficit for 2025/26. Sounds bad.
💷 Medway Council will use £1.5m of Pride in Place funding to offer small grants to improve shop fronts, improve the public realm in Chatham and Gillingham, and bring one empty property back into use.
📄 For fans of excessively long survey forms, the government's formal consultation for the shape of local government reorganisation in Kent and Medway is underway.
🏗️ Peel Waters has applied to demolish unused warehouses at Chatham Docks ahead of future redevelopment.
🏚️ Medway Council raided an unlicensed HMO in Chatham last week, discovering 13 people living at the property, including 4 in sheds.
🧑⚖️ A man who tried to set fire to Get Ready Comics in Rochester has been jailed for three years.
⛪ Holy Trinity Church in Twydall has sustained damage after thieves attempted to steal lead from the roof.
⚽ Bromley Football Club criticised a number of their own supporters for their behaviour at Priestfield Stadium last week, before quickly deleting the post.
🏪 Work has begun on a new Lidl store near Medway Valley Park in Strood.
Property of the week
This three-bedroom semi on Symonds Road in Cliffe is on the market for offers in excess of £335,000 and currently boasts what the listing describes as panoramic orchard views, a phrase that carries a certain time sensitivity given the planning application above. The house itself is compact at around 80sqm, with two reception rooms, a ground floor bathroom, a separate kitchen, a private driveway and a west-facing rear garden. Upstairs, the third bedroom is accessed via the second, a layout that will suit some buyers rather better than others. It is a very Cliffe sort of listing: Village feel, countryside on the doorstep for now, and the familiar question of how long that outlook will last.
Events this week
🎸 Sat 7 Feb - The 'I's Have It // Themed open-mic of songs with titles in the first person singular. Rochester Social Club. Free.
🐋 10 Feb - 7 Mar - Whales // Three sperm whale sculptures suspended in the Nave. Rochester Cathedral. Free.
📷 12 Feb - 1 Mar - Happiness in Nature // Exhibition of photography work by young people in Medway. Chatham Historic Dockyard. Free.
Sport this weekend
⚽ Gillingham FC vs Tranmere Rovers // Sat 7 Feb, League Two, Priestfield Stadium. Gills return to home league action against struggling Tranmere Rovers, offering a chance to pick up points at Priestfield.
⚽ Chatham Town vs Chichester City // Sat 7 Feb, Isthmian League Premier Division, Bauvill Stadium. Chatham host Chichester City, who sit 14th in the table.
🏒 Invicta Dynamos vs Streatham Redhawks // Sun 8 Feb, NIHL South Division 1, Planet Ice. The local ice hockey side are at home for a league fixture against Streatham Redhawks, who sit one place above them in the league.
Footnotes
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