'Eyesore' multi-storey car park defended by Maidenhead leader

Cabinet members agreed to enter a contract with construction firm Buckingham Group next month to build a controversial £11.68 million new car park at Vicus Way in Oldfield ward at a meeting on January 28 (Thursday).

It will accommodate more than 200 spaces for commuters and town centre employees, in hopes to support businesses and freeing up parking spaces for short-stay visitors such as shoppers.

It was also heard moving long-term parking away from the town centre will reduce traffic movement and pollution.

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Councillor David Coppinger (Conservative: Bray), lead member for planning and Maidenhead, said this car park is an “essential block” for the town and for its rebirth – where he warned without this rebirth, the town “will die”.

However, this didn’t quash councillor Geoff Hill’s (The Borough First: Oldfield) concerns of building the “eyesore” multi-storey car park, saying the need to have office space in a post-Covid town could be reduced as people swap to home working, making car parking “redundant”.

He said: “Maidenhead is now a gigabit telephone exchange as are other areas in the country. As more and more people and businesses acquire gigabit broadband, and they will in the next few years because it will be rolled out very, very fast, then there’ll be less and less need for office space.

“Virtual offices will be the norm and Covid has proven conclusively that we do not need to attend offices to do work like this. It’s obviously better to run council meetings in council chambers – but we can do it without.”

He also asked why cabinet members are ignoring a “crescendo” of objections to this plan and planning policies.

Vicus Way Car Park 2019 layout

The leader of the council, councillor Andrew Johnson (Conservative: Hurley & Walthams), said planning permission was granted back in 2019 and wasn’t subject to a judicial review and overturned.

But Cllr Johnson did pledge the council will try and make this plan “as neighbourly as possible” for residents.

On virtual offices, Cllr Johnson said he was “not convinced” they will become the norm, suspecting a hybrid-model of corporate working would replace this.

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He said: “I would suspect we may see more interest from occupiers looking to move out of central London. It’s often been talked about this string of satellite towns around the capital that are indeed attractive to big corporates to have some of their office accommodation there or some office touchdown space.

“I don’t think we can deny there is a big commuter hinterland around Maidenhead. Will all that go back to London four or five days a week? I suspect not – but that doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be some form of substantial office provision within the town.”

He also said they did consider other potential uses for the site such as commercial and residential use – but felt the best long-term financial investment was to progress with the Vicus Way car park.