Dockside Outlet Centre, Chatham: Shops, Parking, Directions and Opening Times

An outlet centre built inside a Grade II* listed Victorian dry-dock cover on the old Chatham naval dockyard, with M&S Outlet, a 70,000 sq ft branch of The Range and around 44 names on the directory. Two things to know before you go: it is not the Historic Dockyard next door, and the parking has not been free since October 2023. Here is what the operator publishes, where its own tenants contradict it, and the one thing we could not check at all.

Last checked 12 September 2026 · Opening times and store lists change — check with the centre before travelling.

Dockside Outlet Centre sits on Maritime Way at Chatham Maritime, on the Medway, inside a building that was already 156 years old when the shops moved in. It opened in June 2003, is anchored by M&S Outlet, Iceland and a very large branch of The Range, and its store directory carried 44 names when we counted it on 12 September 2026.

Start by separating it from its neighbour, because almost everything written about this corner of Kent blurs the two. The Chatham Historic Dockyard is a separate visitor attraction with its own charity, admission and car park. When the naval dockyard closed in 1984 the site was split three ways: the Historic Dockyard, a commercial marina, and Chatham Maritime — the middle portion, a business park and shopping centre of 300 to 350 acres depending on who is counting. The outlet centre is in that middle portion.

The web address in circulation is correct. chathamdockside.co.uk resolves, is properly server-rendered, and every page we wanted loaded. But the centre answers to at least three web identities: its visitor page gives contacts at both chathamdockside.co.uk and docksideoutlet.co.uk, VisitKent still lists the website as docksideshopping.com, and there are two Facebook pages. Use chathamdockside.co.uk.

The parking is the thing that catches people out. Charges came in on 4 October 2023 after two false starts, and a good deal of the internet has not caught up: the operator's own 2021 site guide still says "FREE PARKING (For the first 4 hours)", See Kent still advertises four free hours and VisitKent still says "Free car parking". None of that is current — though we cannot tell you what the tariff is today either, because the car park's own site, cmcarpark.co.uk, was the one address on this job we could not get to open.

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The essentials

Opening times

Checked on the operator's own pages on 12 September 2026. This is the rare centre whose website does not argue with itself: the same four lines appear identically on the homepage, the visitor information page, This Week, In & Around and Waterside, and unchanged in the centre's own site guide PDF from April 2021. Six operator sources across five years, all agreeing.

The tenants are a different matter, and they disagree in both directions. Clarks, in Unit 8, publishes Monday to Saturday 9am to 6pm — trading a full hour before the mall says it opens on weekdays, and closing an hour before it does on a Thursday. Mountain Warehouse, in Unit 36, publishes Monday 10am to 5pm and Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 6pm, an hour short of the centre on Thursday and Friday evenings and an hour late on Saturday morning. Neither is necessarily wrong: outlet tenants set their own hours inside the landlord's envelope, and an outlet centre may not have a genuinely enforced park-wide set at all. Marks and Spencer's own store-finder page, which usually settles this sort of question, rendered only its navigation here and gave us nothing.

The Range is the useful outlier. The operator publishes its anchor's hours separately and they are much longer — 9am to 8pm Monday to Friday, 9am to 7pm Saturday — so there is an hour at the start of the day and two at the end when The Range is trading and the mall proper is not.

Nobody publishes festive or bank holiday hours for the centre. Not Christmas, not Boxing Day, not Easter, not a single bank Monday; the only public holiday time attached to this address anywhere is Mountain Warehouse's own. Ring 01634 899 387. The Waterside times in the table are the operator's own and worth having, because the dining and leisure terrace keeps very different hours from the shops.

Getting there

By road

Use ME4 3ED. On the junction we will show our working, because the operator published one and then stopped. Its own site guide PDF, hosted on chathamdockside.co.uk and dated April 2021, says the centre is "Off junction 1 M2 motorway" — the operator publishing a junction on its own domain, which is the standard we hold to. But its current visitor page has dropped it, saying only that you come via the A2 or M2, from London by the M25 to the A2/M2, and from Maidstone or south Kent by the M20 or A229. So: M2 J1, per the operator's 2021 guide, not repeated on its current page.

The useful local detail comes from the property listings: Completely Retail puts the centre "just off the A289 Pier Road" and Visit South East England describes the approach "via the Medway Tunnel through the M2 (A2) and A289 roads". On the ground it is the A289 and the tunnel you follow, not a motorway sign.

Parking — read this bit

There are two car parks: a main surface-level one, open 24 hours, and a multi-storey, open from 6am until late. The operator publishes no tariff, no space count and no height limit; it refers all of it to cmcarpark.co.uk, run by Chatham Maritime Car Park Management Ltd.

Charging began on 4 October 2023, postponed twice — from 28 September, then from 30 September — because of software problems. The reason given was that a survey had found more than 200 cars left overnight by people not using the shops or the leisure units. Coaches are said to be welcome by both tourist boards, but no bay count, booking arrangement or cycle parking is published by anyone.

Two tariffs were published three days apart and they do not match. Here are both. From Chatham Maritime Trust and KentOnline on 25 September 2023: first hour free, then £1.25 for one to two hours, £2.50 for two to three, £3.50 for three to four, £5 for four to five, £8 up to twelve hours, £10 up to twenty-four. Revised, per KentOnline on 28 September 2023: free period extended to an hour and a half, then £1.25 to two and a half hours, £2.50 to three and a half, £4 to four and a half, £8 beyond five hours, £10 overnight.

The revised version also carried concessions: Odeon customers £1.25 for four hours (cut from £3.50), two hours free for Ninja Warrior and Gymfinity, two three-hour free passes for Blue Badge holders, PureGym members exempt while using the gym, and free passes for staff.

All of that is three years old and we could not refresh it — cmcarpark.co.uk would not open for us on any attempt. Treat the figures as the shape of the scheme, not today's prices, and check the signage or the app when you arrive. No height limit is published for either car park, and nobody names an ANPR or enforcement contractor.

By train and bus

Chatham is the station every source names, and nobody publishes a walking time or distance from it — the operator's own answer is to get a bus. On which bus, three sources give three answers and we are not picking one: the operator says the number 2 from Chatham station, about ten minutes; See Kent says routes 140 and 141, same ten minutes; VisitKent says only that "regular buses operate from Chatham Waterfront Bus Station to Dockside Outlet Centre", with no route numbers. No bus operator is named by any of them.

Accessibility

This is a two-storey centre, so vertical access matters more than in a single-level mall. The operator publishes a lift at the main entrance to the first floor plus escalators, and a dedicated assistance telephone by the main-entrance escalators for requesting wheelchair access. There are accessible toilets and mobility parking per the centre's own site guide, and baby changing and an ATM at the main entrance.

What is not published: no Changing Places toilet, no Shopmobility scheme, no quiet hours, and no AccessAble guide could be retrieved.

The shops

The operator's directory listed 44 names on 12 September 2026, with no "coming soon" markers; the operator and both tourist boards market that as "over 40 brands".

The anchors

M&S Outlet, The Range and Iceland, per the operator's homepage. The Range is the giant: JP Retail's letting particulars put it at 70,000 sq ft — nearly half the centre's floorspace on the smallest published total, more than two-fifths on the largest. It expanded into that size around 2014, the year before the centre changed hands.

Everything else on the directory

Fashion and footwear: Choice, Clarks, Class Menswear, Cotton Traders, Moda, Monkhouse, Moss, Mountain Warehouse, Pavers, Roman Originals, Trespass, Emmanuelle Marshall Children's Shoes. Home and gifts: Julian Charles, ProCook, The Gift Company, The Works, Top Gift, Handmade With Love, Bubbleo Tree. Health and beauty: beautyoutlet, The Fragrance Shop, Holland & Barrett, Luxe Nail Lounge, Spec Savvy. Food: Bakers + Baristas, McDonalds, Pad Thai Live, Ru Cafe, Sotto Lounge, The Panini Brothers, You Me Sushi. Plus Baggage Factory, Card Factory, Ability Plus, Jonas & James, HUMANLY.

The non-retail lettings are deliberate

At least nine of those 44 are not shops: a nursery and pre-school, a dental practice, a flexible-workspace operator, a van hire desk, a bank branch, a nail salon, an opticians and several food-court counters. That is not neglect, it is strategy, and it is properly dated. In December 2021 the Department for Work and Pensions took upper and ancillary space, fitting out for an opening in early 2022, and Reed in Partnership took an adjacent unit under the government's Restart Scheme with at least 30 jobs expected. Peter Everest, named as the owner, said: "We are delighted to confirm there will be two major jobs-focused occupiers coming to Dockside Outlet early in the New Year."

CoStar reported in May 2022 that the letting had taken the centre to full occupancy, describing the strategy as an "outlet and community" repositioning. That is what the nursery, the dentist, the workspace operator and the bank are doing on a factory-outlet directory.

What has arrived

Beauty Outlet, The Fragrance Shop and Pad Thai were all described as recent lettings as at December 2021, and ProCook as a recent addition on the agent's undated particulars. CoStar reported on 16 October 2024 that Choice was relocating into a new 9,000 sq ft unit beside The Range and that a McDonald's deal had been agreed; the LoopNet listing said McDonald's and Loungers "will be opening close by in Quarter 2 of 2025". Both McDonalds and Sotto Lounge, a Loungers brand, are on the live directory today — but no opening date was ever published for either.

What has gone — and why there is not a single date

Nobody publishes closures at Dockside, so we used the operator's own back catalogue: its April 2021 site guide PDF, still on its website, lists the units as they were then. Trading in April 2021 and absent now: Burger King, Cadbury, Claire's, Peacocks, Regatta, Suit Direct, Klass, Alchemy, Scoots, Safia's Barbers and Safia's Beauty Bar. Sports Direct, an anchor in the coverage of the 2015 sale, has also gone.

There are no dates on any of those and we are not going to imply there are. All the comparison proves is that those names were on an operator plan in April 2021 and are not on its directory in September 2026; some of the chains contracted nationally in the interval. One third party has not noticed at all — See Kent still advertises Cadbury as a current store.

One number that is not evidence of decline: the building was converted for about 85 retail units across two storeys and the directory now shows 44. Units have plainly been amalgamated — a single 70,000 sq ft Range swallows a great many small outlet shops.

Waterside is a separate list

The operator uses "Waterside" for the dining and leisure terrace alongside: Costa, Subway, KFC, Pizza Hut, Kaspa's, Nando's, Wagamama, Zizzi, plus the Odeon, PureGym, Ninja Warrior and Gymfinity Kids. None appears on the 44-name store directory, so do not add the two lists together.

Useful to know

It is not the Historic Dockyard

Worth saying twice. The Chatham Historic Dockyard is a separate, charity-run visitor attraction with its own admission, opening times and car park; booking tickets for one books you nothing at the other. The operator's In & Around page points to the rest of the neighbourhood: the Copper Rivet Distillery in the Victorian Pump House No. 5, the nine-screen Odeon, Fort Amherst and Chatham Marina.

There is a nursery inside the shopping centre

Dockside Day Nursery and Pre-School occupies a unit and has its own item in the site's main navigation. It is not a crèche for shoppers — it is a nursery that happens to be in a mall.

Where it sits among the other Kent destinations

Dockside is the small, specialised one. For a full-size covered mall in Medway itself, Hempstead Valley is a few miles south; for scale, Bluewater at Greenhithe is in a different league and about half an hour up the A2; and Westwood Cross covers the east Kent coast. None of those is an outlet centre, which is the point of coming here instead.

Things nobody publishes

We could find no published policy on dogs, no mention of free Wi-Fi, no gift card scheme, no lost property arrangement, no quiet hours, no Changing Places toilet and no Shopmobility. That does not mean none of them exists — only that the operator does not say so on any page we could read. If one of them decides your trip, ring 01634 899 387.

Which phone number

The current number is 01634 899 387, on four of the operator's own pages. Two others are still in circulation and neither is current: 01634 893 200, from the 2021 site guide, and 01634 899389, which Visit South East England publishes and which looks like a mistyping.

Check the parking before a long day

If you are planning a cinema trip and a shop, the Odeon concession under the 2023 scheme was £1.25 for four hours — worth asking about at the kiosk, since we could not confirm it still exists.

How it got here

The building is much older than the shopping centre and rather more important. Historic England lists it as "Boilershop", list entry 1267821, Grade II*, listed on 6 June 1984 — the same year the naval dockyard closed. It was built in 1847 by Fox Henderson & Co, not at Chatham but at Woolwich Dockyard, as a cover over a dry dock, and relocated to Chatham around 1876: a cast- and wrought-iron frame with corrugated-iron cladding, an eleven-bay range with a three-bay western extension, and a square clock tower with a clock on each face under an octagonal cupola.

Almost every secondary source gets the grade wrong. Completely Retail calls it "a Grade II listed Victorian building, the former dockyard boiler house"; VisitKent says "a Grade Two listed building"; Visit South East England says "a Grade II listed structure". Historic England and Kent County Council's heritage record both say Grade II*, a materially higher designation. We are going with the designating authority.

The conversion. The architects were 4D Studio, who won the job in competition and describe the boiler shop on their own project page as "the most important of several derelict listed buildings in the former naval dockyard at Chatham". Their scheme put 85 retail units across two storeys inside the shed, with a food court and a restaurant, and added an extension at each end — a curved barrel-vault roof to the west, a membrane structure to the east.

The developer was Dockside Developments — named in the Kent press as Mike Hewitt, Steve Reeves and Trevor Goff — and the cost was put at £63m in a KentOnline report of 28 March 2002, which gave the opening as June 2003 and the scheme as 150,000 sq ft with "approximately 85 designer outlets". Goff expected more than three million visitors a year and thought Chatham would out-draw Ashford. The project manager, Guy Shepherd of TryAccord, told the same paper: "As a civil engineer, I'm desperately impressed. It is the last long-span truss building in the United Kingdom."

Ownership changed once, in 2015, and has not changed since. KentOnline reported on 2 April 2015 that the centre had been sold for £9.1m by Matrix to WD Ltd, a retail management specialist, with the deal completing at the end of March and the acquisition debt from ICG Longbow. That coverage described a 163,000 sq ft mall with 43 stores, anchored by The Range, M&S Outlet, Clarks, Sports Direct and Choice.

The holding company is WD Chatham Limited, number 06670056, whose current directors are Peter Lindsay Everest (since 5 November 2008) and Anthony Phillip Sutton (since 14 June 2023). An Anthony Sutton is quoted as Dockside's centre manager in both 2015 and 2023 — the same name at the same centre — but no source states that the manager and the director are one person, so we leave it as an observation.

The site was refinanced in late 2024. Companies House shows the ICG Longbow charge satisfied on 10 October 2024 and two Katch Fund Solutions charges satisfied on 1 November 2024, with a single outstanding charge created on 28 October 2024 in favour of Westbrooke Private Capital over "property known as site J3, Maritime Way, Chatham, Medway". Westbrooke is a lender, not an owner, and nothing in that filing is a sale.

Peter Everest's stated plan in 2015 was to fill the empty units, and the then centre manager Anthony Sutton said: "Our previous owners have taken us to this stage, but it is now time to move on a step. It is early days, but I am confident this will herald a new era for Dockside." What followed was not what an outlet centre's owner would normally mean by that: the empty space went to the DWP, Reed in Partnership, a dentist, a workspace operator and a nursery, and by May 2022 CoStar was reporting the centre full. The last documented push was October 2024 — Choice into a new 9,000 sq ft unit beside The Range, and a McDonald's deal agreed. Both are trading now.