Festival Place Shopping Centre in Basingstoke has been recognised for its high standards in parking facilities and been granted the Park Mark Plus award from the British Parking Association (BPA), making it the largest accredited shopping centre by way of parking spaces.
Building on the Safer Parking Scheme’s Park Mark award, the BPA’s new Park Mark Plus award assesses a range of criteria from services and operations to design and build. To qualify, 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 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 EV charging units and increased safety measures. The refurbished multi-storey car park now consists of 2,624 spaces spread across five 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.”
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.
