Closed Worthing car park's sale to be relaunched
Worthing Borough Council has agreed to remarket the currently closed Grafton multi-storey car park.
The decision was made by the joint strategic committee at a meeting on Tuesday, July 8, with the car park having been closed since May because of safety concerns.
In 2023, councillors voted to sell the car park and original bidders will be invited to make new offers.
The building will be officially marketed for sale by July 22, with a final decision on the council’s preferred buyer to be made by the committee in March, 2026, according to a report presented on Tuesday.
The committee said although a £426,830 in income surplus for the car park’s budget was recorded over 2025/26, commitments to additional safety works, like netting and scaffolding, were about £200,000 so far, with an expected £210,000 fall in revenue for the council over 2026/27 due to the closure.
Council officers said at the meeting that a ‘very detailed’ engineering assessment frbyom HOP Consulting on the state of the car park was due in the week commencing Monday, July 21, and added this would likely determine whether or not the car park’s issues could be fixed and it reopened.
Officers said they also hoped by relaunching the sale they could secure funding for redevelopment of the site through the government, as a result of its summer spending review allocating £39billion towards the building of more affordable housing.
Deputy council leader and cabinet member for regeneration Rita Garner (Lab, Tarring) said the ‘urgent’ closure of the park was a ‘real blow’ to the council.
“What we’re now doing is looking at it, whatever the HOP report says, at being able to move this strand of work forward so that we’re able to, before local government reorganisation, have a clear plan for this site”, she said.
“There’s been close monitoring of parking numbers, the indications are that even when the car park in High Street was closed for five days recently we still had sufficient capacity.
“I think that has given us confidence to alter the emphasis of this site – we don’t need to have parking in the same amount as we thought before”.
Cllr Garner also emphasised that with the new Civic Quarter and reopening of Buckingham Road multi-storey car park, Worthing had sufficient parking supply.
In a later statement, the council said it hoped to have a developer in place for the site by Spring, 2026.