In the second half of 2018 the University held two days of public exhibitions, as well as separate meetings with local residents groups and Swaythling Primary School, to expand on its earlier announcement that it wished to consolidate car parking on the Highfield campus. The most significant part of this is the plan to move much of the surface car parking from one site on Broadlands Road, across the road to the existing car park on the Hampton Park site.
Multi-storey car park proposals
The current Broadlands Road car parking provides 383 spaces and these will move to join the existing 331 spaces in Hampton Park across the road. This will give a total of 714 spaces in the multi-storey. These are not new car parking spaces, they are simply relocated from existing surface car parking already in the vicinity.
This is a decked car park with four decks, which at its tallest point (where the stairwells are positioned) will measure 13 metres in height. It is not four full storey heights tall. A cross section of the car park is shown in the full exhibition materials available below.
Former Allotment Site
The University is also applying for 130 spaces to be created on disused land adjacent to the current Broadlands Road car park. All our proposals are supported by careful consideration of factors including:
Air quality - the impact on which was deemed by independent experts to be ‘not significant’ and;
Traffic flow - the proposals principally focus on the relocation of existing parking, which would then be closed. The impact has been assessed by experts as not likely to cause significant queueing.
We have provided artist’s impressions of the proposed parking facility to demonstrate the careful consideration that has been made to reduce the visual impact of the building, maintain a perimeter from neighbouring properties and provide additional planting as screening. These are all explained in detail in the exhibition materials available in the PDF below.