University of Birmingham car parking

It will get worse.

It is stupid that you have to be here between 0800-0830 to get a parking space, your working hours are then increased!!

As others have noted, this is not just an issue about parking it is an issue about equalities.

I have had to put my kids in breakfast club just so I can get in early to get a parking space in the mornings. This is costing me £30 a week!

The lack of parking causes me to waste significant time, and causes me significant stress, circling campus looking for parking - especially when there are no spaces left in the multi-story parks.

I only use my car to enable me to visit students who are on placement and then get back for meetings/teaching etc. The lack of parking is resulting in me being far less efficient with my time.

I am sure that the Athena Swan would be most surprised to see that staff with caring duties are treated in such a thoughtless way.

There are two issues here: one is you have to pay upon entering the barrier even if you cannot find a parking space; the other is that it is extremely difficult to find a parking space for very busy members who have multiple short meetings out of campus

I often work late shifts and struggle to find a car parking space. This is inconvenient especially on the dark nights walking through campus where it is not well lit.

I regularly have to work lates and find this very stressful after a 32 mile drive to get here trying to find a parking space. On several occasions I have found myself driving around campus for a good hour or so. The area next to the new library needs to be made into a car park or even the old Munroe site should be knocked down and made into a multi-storey especially with all the new developments.

I arrived at 9am, but there were no spaces in the multi-storey car park. I drove around campus for an hour and yet still found no place to park. I then sat in my car, hot-spotting on my phone, to use my laptop to download my teaching so that I could rehearse my lectures and respond to emails. I eventually found a car park space, by virtue of a white van contractor leaving campus, and managed to get to my office 2 hours after my arrival. I had to cancel a student's research meeting and delay a second meeting. The car parking situation needs addressing as a priority.

The current car parking situation has a detrimental effect on my work life balance and stress levels and I don't think I am on my own with those views. The University management should restore at least the lost car park places. It must also be noted that the numerous contractors block many parking slots and a solution should be found for them.

On a number of occasions I've driven around campus for over an hour looking for a parking space. I have to do school and nursery runs, so can't arrive any earlier. Last week, after driving around until 11 am, I gave up, went home, and got a taxi back in - this is not really a repeatable option, either financially or for remaining employed at the university. I tried parking in out of the way spots, but after being ticketed multiple times, this is no longer an option.

I am also concerned that if I check into a parking lot and then cant' find space and have to park elsewhere, I am still getting charged for the parking.

This also means that students without a permit (which would be useless anyway as pointed out by others) will have to park their car much farther from campus and arrive earlier if they want to park their car in the same place as they did a few years ago. I spend a lot more time walking than driving even though I don't live nearby.

It is difficult to invite service engineers to the lab as they usually have to bring equipment and find it difficult to park nearby. Incidentally the alternative for commuting is to use the train, but the station is now so busy that the crowds could almost be dangerous at peak times. People employed just to shout 'move down the platform' on trains towards the city at evening rush hour. Capacity to travel to the campus needs to be increased by different transport modes.

Just to echo the problem for people who do not travel to directly from home, but have caring responsibilities away from home. Traffic and congestion in and around the University make parking difficult at the best of times, but this is hampered even further by the ever decreasing number of parking spaces. The University intends to reduce these further to "encourage" staff to use public transport. Clearly, they have no idea of how long it would take to travel to work by public transport! I already start my day at 4.30am - I simply can't reorganise my caring responsibilities any earlier just to accommodate the University.

Apparently Birmingham has just received a golden award for income generation through parking fines. Well done, let's all celebrate.

As a commuting PhD student at the University, it is a ridiculous situation wherein people arriving at 9:30am are struggling to find a parking space. Myself and many other people work abnormal shifts and when I will be working until 10pm in the evening, it is not ideal to arrive at 8am. However, this seems to be a necessity to guarantee that parking is possible. Parking has been an issue since the closure of the South Car Park. The closure of SCP meant the opening of the North Car Park, which is on the order of 3x smaller. Since the closure of the NCP, the multi-storey simply cannot handle the parking requirements of staff, let alone the thousands of students who commute to the University. On that note, is it really fair to charge students and staff to park at their place of tutelage/work? What is the current situation with the car park of the sports centre? I cannot imagine this car park is full (especially considering that only 3,500 students out of 70,000 are being allowed memberships), therefore can this car park not be opened for staff and students? The current dilemna only serves to show students and staff how disillusioned the top brass of the University are with the needs of its students and employees.

Building contractors are given priority parking over staff most of whom do not park properly within the parking bays.