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

The shopping centre had previously won Safer Parking Scheme’s Park Mark award.

The Park Mark Plus award assesses a range of criteria from services and operations to design and build.

In 2019, Festival Place completed a multimillion-pound refurbishment of its car park to significantly enhance the user experience, which includes wayfinding technology, electric charging units and increased safety measures.

The car park now has 2,624 spaces spread across five floors, 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.