Mobile car wash in Chatham, Kent

Parking reality

Terraces, the Brook and a town centre being rebuilt

Chatham grew to house the dockyard's workforce, and the streets between the High Street and Luton village are the result: long runs of Victorian terraces with no drives, where the car lives on the street and a space outside your own door is worth keeping. Much of the centre sits inside Medway Council's controlled parking zones; the council sells resident permits only inside its zones, valid for a year, and shows the boundaries on an address map. A 2016 council briefing lists the area south of zone A in Watling ward among the zones reviewed.

For shoppers and anyone without a space, the Brook multi storey is the council's long stay car park: 544 spaces, charged 24 hours a day, from £1.80 for the first hour to £6 for 6 to 24 hours, with a 72 hour maximum and number plate recognition. The former Tesco on the Brook came down in 2025, and the Mountbatten House redevelopment removed the street level ramps to the Pentagon bus station in 2022, so the middle of town is a building site in places and will be for a while.

Why a wash that comes to you suits Chatham

Driving out of a permit street to find a jet wash, then driving back to find no space, is a Saturday wasted. We come to the kerb, your washer sorts their own parking, and the only vehicle that needs to be legally parked is yours. On the estates up the Luton valley, where most homes have a drive, it is simpler still.

What Chatham does to a car

Dockyard dust, the A2 and the valley hills

Chatham sits where the dip slope of the North Downs meets the Medway, with the town curving round the Brook valley and the High Street along its floor. The A2, Watling Street, runs past on the ancient Celtic line, and the Luton and Capstone valleys climb away to the south. A car that lives here gets traffic film from the A2 and the Medway Tunnel approaches, brake dust from the hills, and the damp, salt tinged air that comes off the river onto the waterfront and St Mary's Island. Up the valley it is leaf fall from the Darland Banks and the woods in autumn and sap in summer.

Chatham Waters, the port side of the old dockyard, has outline approval for up to 950 homes alongside later living, commercial, retail and leisure uses, and the council's cabinet has backed a masterplan for the next phase of the town centre, covering the High Street and Best Street, with new retail space and an extension to the Central Theatre. Regeneration means dust, and dust settles on paint. A regular outside wash takes it off before it marks; a ceramic coating stops it gripping at all.

Who lives here, and the clean that suits

Chatham had 80,596 people in 2020. The 2021 Census shows how different its wards are. Chatham Central, the terraces and the town centre, has 16,900 people in 6,500 households; 69 percent have a car and only 45 percent of homes are owner occupied. River ward, which takes in the waterfront and St Mary's Island, has 12,300 people and 58 percent of its homes are flats. Luton and Wayfield, up the valley, has 14,900 people and 73 percent of households with a car. Across Medway as a whole 81 percent of households run a car and 40 percent run two or more.

• A car on a terrace with no drive: Essential Exterior at the kerb every few weeks, and your space stays yours.
• A flat with an allocated bay by the waterfront: Deluxe Exterior for the wheels and glass, and a ceramic coating against the river air.
• Families in Wayfield and Davis Estate: Deluxe Inside & Out on the drive, with a proper vacuum of the back seats.
• Vans and tradespeople serving the regeneration sites: a Deluxe Exterior lifts the dust and the booking page prices larger vehicles for you.

More on this: how a wash works on a permit street and cleaning for business vehicles.