Festival Place Shopping Centre awarded Park Mark Plus for exceptional parking standards

Festival Place Shopping Centre has been recognised for its high standards in parking facilities and been granted the elite, Park Mark Plus award, making it the largest accredited shopping centre by way of parking spaces.

Building on the well-regarded Safer Parking Scheme’s Park Mark award, the new Park Mark Plus recognises only the highest quality car parks. The award assesses a range of criteria from services and operations to design and build. To qualify for the award, the car park must meet Park Mark and Disability Parking Accreditation criteria as a minimum.

In 2019, Festival Place completed a multimillion pound refurbishment of its car park to significantly enhance the user experience and bring the car park experience in line with the wider retail and leisure experience at Festival Place. The result is a modern car park, which has been proven to enhance visitors’ experience thanks to the use of new wayfinding technology, the addition of electric charging units and increased safety measures. The refurbished multi-storey car park now consists of 2,624 spaces spread across 5 floors. It operates 24/7 and is open to the wider public of Basingstoke, including season-ticket holders.

Neil Churchill, centre director at Festival Place, said: “Our ambition with the recent refurbishment of the car park at Festival Place was to provide a clean, modern, intelligent and safe car park for our visitors and the wider public of Basingstoke. The old car park wasn’t in line with the wider retail and leisure experience at Festival Place and the refurbishment we conducted was key to delivering an overall enjoyable experience. We are honoured to see our efforts being celebrated by this award.”

Warren Bradshaw, British Parking Association Area Manager said: “I am delighted that the Festival Place Shopping Centre Car Park has achieved the Park Mark Plus award. Gary Cooper and his team have demonstrated their hard work and commitment to providing a safe parking environment for their customers. I was especially impressed with the continuous improvement ideas that were presented to me during the assessment.”

Festival Place is the highest ranked shopping centre outside a major UK city. It is listed in the top 20 of GlobalData’s UK shopping centres report and Trevor Wood Associates positions it in its Premier League of shopping centres.

Photo: (left to right) Nathan Evans, Guest Services Supervisor; Dan Burgess , Car Park Assistant; Elijah Curtis, Car Park Assistant; Warren Bradshaw, BPA Area Manager; Michelle Koukoullis, Guest Service Manager; Gary Cooper, Head Of Operations; Simon Bottom, Police Assessor, Hants Police; Tom Higgs, Head of Soft Services; Mohammed Farook, Car Park Assistant; Danilo Coelho, Car Park Assistant.