Cobham skatepark opens 12 September after £867,534 build

Cobham’s new skatepark opens on Saturday 12 September, and the council is running a free event from 12pm to 4pm to launch it. It is at Leg O’Mutton Field, off Downside Bridge Road.

The afternoon is billed as an opening jam rather than a ribbon-cutting. Elmbridge Borough Council says it will include:

• rider demonstrations
• competitions
• music
• prizes

It is free, and the council’s notice sets no booking requirement. Skateboarders, scooter riders and BMX riders are all invited, and so is anyone who just wants to see the thing.

What it cost, and who paid

The build came to £867,534. That figure and the split behind it are on the public record because Surrey County Council’s Cabinet Member for Customer and Communities had to sign off the largest share, and did so on 16 December 2025.

Within that total, the report breaks the money down by job: £766,734 for the design and build of the spray concrete skatepark, £60,000 of contingency, £38,400 for architectural and engineering support, and £2,400 for the project company’s auditor.

The Your Fund Surrey money is paid in staged payments against evidence of spend, with 5% held back by the county council until it has final evidence of income, expenditure, building control and completion sign-off.

Why Cobham was building one at all

The case put to Surrey was not that Cobham wanted a nicer skatepark. It was that the old one had stopped being usable. The county council’s report records that the metal skatepark on the site dated back to 2007, that it was “dysfunctional and unsafe”, and that part of the facility had already been decommissioned.

The report also sets out why officers thought the location mattered:

• Elmbridge has the second largest population of any Surrey borough or district, around 140,500.
• It has the largest percentage of young people aged 0 to 17 in the county.
• It has the highest number of households with dependent children in the county.
• Despite that, the report calls Cobham “an area with limited recreational youth facilities”.

Councillor David Lewis, the divisional member, put it more bluntly in his letter of support. “In general Cobham is an affluent area but it does contain significant pockets of deprivation,” he wrote. “A constant and recurring theme is that there is not a lot for the younger generation to do in the area.”

Three years, 395 comments and a company set up to build it

This did not happen quickly. Planning permission was granted on 7 February 2024, and the council said in March this year that residents had been developing the project for three years.

The vehicle was the Cobham Village Partnership, set up as a community interest company specifically to plan the scheme, bid for the money and deliver it. Design and construction went to Maverick Skateparks, a skater-run firm that builds spray concrete parks, picked through a competitive procurement the CIC ran itself.

The consultation numbers depend on which council you ask. Elmbridge says the design was shaped by 199 responses from local riders and residents. Surrey’s report says the Have Your Say exercise on the skatepark drew 395 comments, and that the CIC received over two hundred expressions of interest from potential users. Both can be true; they are counting different things.

What the design was asked to do is more specific than “a skatepark”:

• open sightlines throughout, so the space is overlooked rather than hidden
• compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act, and intended to be wheelchair friendly
• a designated seating area, added after user feedback
• minimalist colour accents, chosen partly to help visually impaired riders read the shapes
• concrete rather than painted surfaces, which the council says deters graffiti

Support letters came from a local police inspector, the vice chair of Cobham Football Club, the Cobham Residents Association, a local architect and three borough councillors.

What happens after the opening

The CIC that built it will be dissolved. The skatepark is then handed to Elmbridge Borough Council, which will maintain it out of its existing green spaces budget under its current contract, and whose enforcement and community safety teams will monitor any antisocial behaviour connected to it. The Cobham & Downside Residents’ Association will manage, promote and monitor usage alongside the skatepark user group, which the report says has more than 400 members.

One line in the report is a reminder of what is coming for local government here: the skatepark “will need to be included within the East Surrey Unitary plans”. Both councils that paid for it are due to be replaced.

The user group plans regular competitions and jams, plus skate, scoot and BMX workshops run with organisations including Skateboard GB.

What it means for you

• The event is Saturday 12 September, 12pm to 4pm, at Leg O’Mutton Field, off Downside Bridge Road, Cobham. It is free and no booking is mentioned.
• The skatepark itself is free to use, with open access, once it opens.
• If you are driving, Elmbridge council car parks give 30 minutes free if you take a ticket, and charges do not apply at all on bank holidays. Tariffs and the free evening rules are on our parking in Elmbridge page.
• Cobham Recreation Ground, separately, has had its play area refurbished and its outdoor green gym upgraded this year.
• If antisocial behaviour is the thing you are worried about, the body to raise it with is Elmbridge Borough Council’s community safety team, not Surrey.

Sources

• Elmbridge Borough Council, Join us for the Cobham skatepark opening JAM, 21 August 2026, for the date, the times, the location and what the event includes, and (in the 20 March 2026 update on the same page) for the 199 consultation responses, the three years of work, the contractor and the Cobham Recreation Ground improvements.
• Surrey County Council, Your Fund Surrey application: Cobham Village Skatepark, Cobham, Elmbridge, Cabinet Member report, 16 December 2025, for the £867,534 total, the £474,373 award, the £390,000 from Elmbridge and £3,161 of crowdfunding, the cost breakdown by activity, the 2007 metal skatepark, the population and youth figures, the 395 Have Your Say comments, the design requirements, the handover arrangements and Cllr David Lewis’s quoted letter.
• Surrey County Council, decisions taken since the last Cabinet, for the resolution approving the full £474,373.

More from Elmbridge News: roadworks and travel, planning news and things to do in Elmbridge.