How To Build A Car Park

If you’ve got a spare piece of land that you think you could monetise, building a car park is one of the top ways that you can earn additional income from it with very minimal long term effort. Companies like Britannia Parking exist to look after your car park development process from start to finish, while also providing on-going management support thereafter to ensure your car park continues to bring in revenue.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the ways that we can help you to build the ideal car park – whether it’s for your employees, your patrons, or the public. To discuss your new build car park with the Britannia Parking team, send us a message via our online contact form.

Car park planning in four steps

Follow these steps to ensure you build a profitable, fit-for-purpose car park.

Figure out why you’re building a car park and for whom
Create your car park design and apply for planning permission
Work with contractors to develop your car park
Set up on-going car park management

Find out more about what’s involved within each step in the following guide.

1.Initial discussions – why and for whom?

Before we help you to design your car park, we’ll need to understand your reasons for building one. Who you intend the car park to be used by will determine the kind of facilities and technology you need.

For example, will you need enough spaces for all of your employees to park? How many blue-badge holder spaces do you need? Do you need technology to ensure only certain number plates are granted access? What do you think the preferred payment method would be?

You may also need to consider factors like parent and child spaces, the type of access your car park requires and maybe even spaces with electric charging points. Once we’ve helped you to iron out these factors, we can start designing your car park.

2.Designing your car park

Before you can build a car park, you’ll need to be granted planning permission. Having a solid design concept is a major factor when you present your designs to the local authority – and any potential investors or stakeholders! So, whether you’re looking to build a multi-storey car park or surface car park, you can trust us to create a design and planning document that will encompass your ideas, and show that you’ve considered the following necessary factors:

Whether or not the car park will increase the local congestion
Whether or not the car park will have an impact on the local environment
Whether the car park will only be used by suitable vehicles and for recognised types of parking, such as short-stay and long-stay
Whether the car park meets a need that’s been brought to attention by the Department for Regional Development or accepted by the body after strong analysis
Whether or not the build of the car park will disrupt the operations and activities of neighbouring buildings

Once you’ve put together your design and planning document, you’ll be able to present your case to the local planning authority and your stakeholders, ensuring you have both the permissions and the funds to build your car park.

3.Work with contractors to build your car park

Even if you’re planning just a simple surface level car park, you’ll need to ensure you work with approved contractors. Britannia Parking already works with experienced contractors, ensuring all work carried out is compliant with construction and health and safety regulations.

For more complex builds, groundworks teams, surveyors, and civil engineers will all have a part to play in your car park build. We’ll ensure all of the teams work together so your car park is completed to the projected deadline.

As our contractors build your car park, we’ll look into the appropriate technology, including Pay and Display Machines, ANPR technology, security cameras, and barriers. We can also look at setting your car park up on our systems, so we can manage things like your security, car park usage and pricing analytics, season car park tickets, and parking penalties.

Once your car park is near completion, we’ll help you to soft launch your car park to ensure all of the technology that we’ve installed works as expected and meets your requirements.

4.Decide on your on-going car park management

As a car park management company, we provide on-going support for a whole host of car parks. Whether you’re building a towering multi-storey or a single level car park for your employees to use, we’ll ensure your car park has everything in place to ensure it’s both profitable and fully functioning in line with the needs of your car park users.

By using the services of a car park management company, you can sit back while your car park runs itself – whether you’re looking for ANPR car park management, or a company to ensure your Pay and Display set up is priced right and monitored, car park management companies like Britannia Parking offer full scale, bespoke management packages.

Want to take your car park build project forward?

For full assistance with your car park build – from design and construction through to on-going management - get in touch with Britannia Parking.

We work with clients to build successful car parks across the UK, including Birmingham, Bournemouth, Bristol, Chelmsford, Cornwall, Edinburgh, Essex, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Reading, Sheffield, Southampton and Wales.