Rishworth Street and Gills Yard car parks to permanently close for city centre housing development

Wakefield Council has confirmed the car parks on Rishworth Street and Gills Yard will permanently close from midnight on Sunday June 18.

Developer Rushbond has planning permission to build 29 townhouses across both sites.

Rushbond is also due to convert nearby former Wood Street police station into 33 flats.

The developments form part of the city’s civic quarter regeneration scheme.

Coun Matthew Morley, the council’s cabinet member for planning and highways, said: “The surface-level car park on Rishworth Street was created as a temporary measure following the demolition of the multi-storey car park.

“It now needs to make way for this exciting regeneration project that will breathe new life into this historic part of the city.

“We know that many of the spaces in these car parks are used by people who work around the civic quarter, including our own council staff.

“We will be directing people to other long stay parking spaces, as well as creating new ones this summer and autumn.”

Councillors raised concerns over the loss of city centre parking as planning permission was granted for the schemes last December.

Kevin Swift, councillor for Wakefield West, said at the time: “This side of town has actually lost car parking hand over fist. A multi-story car park had previously been on Rishworth Street until it was demolished around a decade ago.”

In January, council leader Denise Jeffery said the authority wanted to build a new multi-storey in the city centre ‘as a matter of urgency’ to make up for a shortfall parking spaces.

She told a meeting of the council’s regeneration, employment and skills overview committee: ”Car parking in Wakefield is a big issue that needs to be put up the agenda very quickly.

“We are going to lose the Rishworth Street parking through development, and that will be a blow. So we are looking at building a multi-storey car park on Borough Road as a matter of urgency.

“I know that perhaps does not fit in with the green agenda about keeping cars out of the town centre, but I think we have got to be realistic.”

Seventy additional long-stay parking spaces at the former Westgate railway station car park will be available from Autumn 2023.