Woking counts a garage as half a space
Woking Borough Council stopped pretending about garages when it adopted its Parking Standards SPD in April 2018. The document says plainly that many owners use them for storage or turn them into living space, and that studies show fewer than half are used for a car. So on new housing, a garage only counts for 50 per cent of a parking space, and only if it measures at least 6m by 3m inside. A carport, being open, counts in full.
The same notes add one line that matters to anyone buying a newer Woking house. The council says approvals will carry a condition restricting the conversion of garages to habitable rooms. If your home was built under these standards, assume the garage is tied up until you've read your permission. Older houses may have something similar written in, so check the planning history for your plot before paying for drawings.
Where a condition exists, you apply to vary or remove it, and the parking figures are what the planners will weigh. For a house, the SPD expects two spaces with three bedrooms and three with four or more. Turning the garage into a fourth bedroom moves you up a band.
Choosing what the garage becomes
Each type below has a longer guide. They're ordered for Woking's post-war and modern estates, where most attached garages are.
Integral. The council's 2010 character study picks out integrated garages as a feature of the borough's post-war housing, and some of the three-storey town houses on the old Brookwood Hospital site in Knaphill have one built in. Shared walls and a floor below house level are the usual surprises.
Single. A single garage under 6m by 3m inside was never a parking space by Woking's own measure, which can help if a condition has to be argued. Expect the old door opening to need a new wall on its own footing.
Read our full guide: Single Garage Conversion: What Is Involved and What to Budget For →
Bedroom. The council's surveyors inspect fire protection as a separate stage, so agree the escape route with them at the start. In the low parts of Byfleet and along the Hoe Stream, government flood guidance lists keeping bedrooms off the ground floor as one possible safeguard, so check your flood zone first.
Home office. A desk for your own job is household use. If you start seeing clients there, ask the planners whether the use has changed, because a stream of visitors also adds to parking on the street.
Utility or playroom. A part conversion can leave room at the front for bikes and bins. The SPD wants at least 6m by 4m or 7m by 3.3m inside before a garage doubles as cycle storage, so a single one will rarely manage both jobs.
Double. Plenty of room for a playroom and a utility side by side. If a parking condition applies, leaving one bay usable as a garage gives the planners less to object to.
Detached. Policy DM9 accepts a freestanding building that is ancillary to the house. Give it a kitchen and its own front door and the council will assess it as if it were a new house.
Gym or studio. On a semi, put the noisy kit away from the party wall and insulate it. A hobby workshop kept for the household normally needs no planning permission, the Planning Portal says, subject to any condition on the house.
Planning and building control. Planning turns on conditions, conservation areas and listing. Building control is a separate matter: turning a garage into a room someone uses normally needs approval under the regulations, here from the council's own surveyors.
Cost and value. We don't publish prices. Raising a sunken floor, new foundations under the infill and a fee to vary a condition are what push a Woking quote up or down.
Open fronts at Goldsworth Park, tight streets in St Johns
Goldsworth Park, built from 1973, mostly has parking set into the front of each plot with little or no boundary to the street, according to the character study. Where a drive sits in front of the garage, a car can usually still go there afterwards, but some houses rely on the road. In St Johns the Victorian houses generally have only on-street parking, while others have paved their front gardens.
The parking SPD notes how many residents ask for dropped kerbs and how many front gardens have already gone to hard standing. If the plan is to convert the garage and pave the lawn to make up for it, the council has already said it doesn't like that trade.
Front walls in Horsell and the other conservation areas
Woking has 27 conservation areas, and the Planning Portal tells owners in one to check with the council before changing a garage. The Horsell appraisal is the most specific. It asks for traditional joinery on doors and windows, discourages plastic frames on walls that can be seen from the street, and says boundary treatments out of keeping with the area won't get consent.
So the window that replaces your garage door should match the timber windows above it, and the brick should match too. The appraisal said the council would seek an Article 4 direction if the evidence supported one, so ask whether any control now covers your street. On a listed building, any change needs listed building consent.
Radon is checked address by address. The UK radon map used for building regulations shows whether your plot is in an affected area, so look it up before the new floor is designed. Woking's own building control team inspects the work in stages and must hear from you within seven days of finishing. Ask for the completion certificate.
Where these facts come from
- Woking: Parking Standards SPD (2018)
- Woking: Parking Standards SPD page
- Woking Character Study (2010)
- Horsell Conservation Area appraisal
- Woking: Development Management Policies DPD (2016)
- Woking Borough Council: conservation and heritage
- Woking Strategic Flood Risk Assessment, Volume 1 (2015)
- Woking building control: book a site inspection
- Woking building control: notice of completion
- Planning Portal: garage conversion planning permission
- Planning Portal: building regulations for a garage conversion
- Planning Portal: converting a garage into a workshop
- GOV.UK: Flood Zones 1, 2, 3 and 3b
- British Geological Survey: updated radon map for Great Britain
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Questions people in Woking ask
Our Knaphill house was built after 2018 and the garage is tiny. Can we still convert it?
Check the planning permission your house was built under. Woking's parking SPD says approvals will restrict converting garages to rooms. If yours does, you'll need to apply to vary that condition, and a garage smaller than 6m by 3m inside never counted as a space under the council's own standard.
We're turning the garage into a fourth bedroom. Does Woking expect another parking space?
The 2018 standard asks for three spaces for a four-bedroom house against two for three bedrooms. Where a condition or application brings parking into play, show where the cars will go.
Can we replace the garage door in Horsell with a uPVC window?
The Horsell appraisal discourages plastic frames on street-facing walls and asks for traditional joinery. A painted timber window matched to the house is far likelier to be accepted.
Could my teenager live in our detached garage in Pyrford?
As a bedroom tied to the family home, it can work. If it becomes independent, with its own kitchen and entrance, Woking's policy DM9 treats it the same as a new dwelling.