Mobile car wash in Gillingham, Kent

Parking reality

Terraces, matchday permits and a town centre getting a facelift

Gillingham grew as a linear town along the road from Brompton and the Great Lines down to the railway station, and the terraces either side of the High Street are where most of its cars still live. The roads around Priestfield Stadium are resident permit only on matchdays, and Gillingham FC's own advice to visiting fans is that there is no parking at the ground, with the Supporters Club running paid parking at three nearby sites for £5 cash. Medway Council sells resident permits only inside its controlled parking zones, shown on an address map, and a 2008 cabinet decision set up zones for specific roads in Gillingham North ward.

If you live on one of those streets you already know the rule: do not give up the space. We come to the kerb, your washer sorts their own parking, and the only vehicle that has to be legally parked is yours. On a drive in Twydall or Hempstead Road it is simpler still.

Love Gillingham

The council launched a Gillingham Town Centre Vision and Action Plan in July 2025, drawn up with residents through the Gillingham Community Panel and the not for profit Design Southeast. A £500,000 public realm project funded by the Government's Pride in Place Impact Fund, including improvements to Civic Square, is due to finish in February 2027, and the council reports extra CCTV, parking restrictions, more police presence and a daily street sweeper on the High Street, plus an Article 4 direction limiting new houses in multiple occupation. Works mean dust on cars parked nearby; a regular wash takes care of it.

What Gillingham does to a car

River air at the Strand, the A2 and the tunnel

Gillingham runs from the Medway shore up to Watling Street, the old A2, which carried the Dover traffic until the M2 opened in the mid 1960s. The Medway Tunnel, open since June 1996, gives the town its second link to Strood and the M2, and the A278 Hoath Way runs down to junction 4. Cars that commute on any of them collect traffic film and brake dust; cars parked near the Strand and Gillingham Pier get the damp, salt tinged air off the river and the gulls that go with it. Two thirds of the old dockyard lay inside Gillingham, and the Chatham Maritime side of it is still being built out, which means site dust drifting over Brompton and the Lines.

Gillingham also has the busiest street market in Medway, on the High Street every Saturday and Monday, so the centre fills up twice a week. None of this is hard on a car if it is washed regularly. Left for months, salt film dulls the paint, droppings etch it and dust scratches when it is wiped dry. Your washer rinses first, photographs before and after, and the report lands on your phone when the job is done.

Who lives here, and the clean that suits

The 2021 Census splits Gillingham sharply. Gillingham North, the terraces towards the river, has 19,200 people in 7,500 households; 71 percent have a car, 28 percent of homes are flats and only 43 percent are owner occupied. Gillingham South, around the station and the High Street, has 17,200 people and 70 percent of households with a car. Twydall, the post war estate to the east, has 13,400 people, 79 percent of households with a car and two thirds of homes owner occupied. Medway as a whole runs at 81 percent of households with a car and 40 percent with two or more.

• A car on a terrace with no drive: Essential Exterior at the kerb every few weeks, and the space stays yours.
• A flat near the Strand: Essential Inside & Out for a car that gets the river air and the gulls.
• A family car in Twydall: Deluxe Inside & Out on the drive, with the back seats properly vacuumed.
• Vans from the business park: a Deluxe Exterior lifts the grime, and our fleet page covers several at once.

More on this: how a wash works on a permit street and why bird droppings and sap damage paint.