Cobham services
motorway service area in Surrey, England, UK
Cobham services is a motorway service area on the M25 motorway in Surrey between junctions 9 and 10. It is operated by Extra and was opened for business on 13 September 2012. Its planned opening date was scheduled to be early 2010, but was changed to early 2012 following various planning issues. The services were constructed as there was concern with the large 65 mile (104 km) gap without any service areas. At either end of that stretch of motorway was South Mimms services and Clacket Lane services, and the Secretary of State explained there was a clear and compelling need for a further service area. The other service area serving the motorway is Thurrock.
In 2018, Cobham services was the busiest service station in the UK.
Planning
Proposals for a service station on the M25 at Cobham were first made in the early 1990s and the first public inquiry took place in 1996. Planning permission was granted in 2005. The service area is built on the site of a farm named 'New Barn Farm', and opened in September 2012.
Local politicians and residents expressed concerns that the service's construction was that the area was to be built on part of the green belt area for Cobham, However, as the whole of the M25 is situated within the green belt, the Secretary of State John Prescott overruled this objection as there was what he called a "clear and compelling need" to have a service station in the south west section of the M25.
The public source identifies “Cobham services” as motorway service area in Surrey, England, UK. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Cobham, services and motorway.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5138898. Authority coordinates are 51.305, -0.406. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2012, 2010, 2018 and 1996.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cobham services” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.