Post 83 – 12/03/25 – Hotel Holloway – The End of Our Summer Respite? (5 Minute Read)
We’ve recently been made aware of a planning application submitted by Royal Holloway that concerns the lifting of current restrictions around the use of George Elliot Hall (GEH) in Harvest Road, Englefield Green.
When Royal Holloway’s application for its ‘Masterplan’ was approved in 2014, the construction of GEH was permitted on the condition that the accommodation would be used for students of Royal Holloway only. Royal Holloway now wants to have that restriction removed though, to allow it to rent any or, potentially, all of the 617 rooms to non-students outside of term time.
In its application, RHUL suggests that its ‘guests’ could include conference attendees, language schools, visiting students and staff working at Royal Ascot, Wentworth PGA golf, Farnborough Air Show etc. The application explains that this apparent expansion into the ‘accommodation rental’ business is purely for its own financial gain which it describes as ‘imperative’.
GEH has no parking of its own, of course, and the application makes it clear that no further parking will be provided with an expectation that the occupants of the 617 rooms will use car park 14 (to the south west of Harvest Road) which has 172 spaces with any additional demand being met by parking on the main campus. Royal Holloway also claims that, even though the Covid-19 pandemic is well behind us, current car parking demand has decreased significantly. Surprisingly, the university claims that pre-Covid demand for parking spaces was only 87% of capacity leaving 172 spaces spare and now, post Covid, car parking demand has returned to only 72% of capacity i.e. 779 of 1,085 spaces being used in peak periods leaving 306 spaces.
Any locals may well wonder then, why visitors to the campus need to park in the surrounding streets if there are so many spare spaces within the campus!
The university’s application does concede that this proposed development at GEH will lead to an increase in trips outside of term time but claims that these will have a ‘negligible’ impact on parking provision and the local highways. However, Royal Holloway’s application also states that the summer school visitors are likely to arrive by coach which could well result in coach traffic along Harvest road.
There can be no doubt that Royal Holloway’s latest venture will put further pressure on the local community and infrastructure when it made no contribution to CIL (community infrastructure levy) in return for its original ‘masterplan’ planning permission.
At the moment, residents have to tolerate a parking nightmare during term time but enjoy some respite when the students go home. Could this be a nail in the coffin of that respite?
To see full details of the planning application, navigate your way to the Runnymede Planning Portal:
https://planning.runnymede.gov.uk/Northgate/PlanningExplorer/GeneralSearch.aspx
and search using the Application Number RU.25/0256
If you have any comments, pop them in the WNTTARH Forum Whatsapp group. If you aren’t a member yet, you can join here: