We still have a responsibility to deliver high quality safe and secure parking services to those that need it.
In these challenging times the world is currently in an unprecedented state of flux. With the UK being in a lockdown scenario the major cities are pretty much deserted with many office staff currently working from home. This situation has meant that most of our estate are operating at a very low occupancy. Whilst there have been some closures of which you can find a full list here, we firmly believe that simply raising the barriers and abandoning our car parks does not provide any real assistance to key workers or any of our internal stakeholders. We still have a responsibility to deliver high quality safe and secure parking services to those that need it.
Under normal circumstances our parking hosts provide a wide range of cleaning services as part of the day to day role. The most challenging part is attempting this in busy car parks which need to have areas cordoned off in order to undertake a full clean of the parking decks. It obviously impinges on the capacity of the car park and therefore causes issues for customer access. During this quieter time our parking hosts are undertaking these activities easily whilst obviously respecting social distancing measures.
Our parking hosts are also concentrating efforts on totally disinfecting equipment in the car park that customers may physically touch. This includes pay stations, ticket machines and customer toilets. Whilst we support the Government advice to regularly wash their hands to the standards set out by the NHS they can be assured that they are less likely to be infected by any equipment in our car parks due to our stringent cleaning measures.
We also ensure that our “tap and go” technology is working perfectly which allows customers to tap into and out of the parking facility with a bank card. This allows the customer to avoid pay stations completely!
Regular patrols of the car parks continue so we can maintain the same safe and secure standards which is synonymous with Q-Park. It’s imperative that a key worker does not return to their car being damaged or stolen which then impacts on their ability to do the work that the country currently depends upon.
Several partnerships have been created with various organisations to meet the parking requirements of key workers across the UK. This includes removing parking charges for NHS staff and visitors at the car parks that we operate in Truro and Taunton on behalf of the Trust.
In city centres we have offered large discounts to NHS Blood Donor Centres visitors at some car parks to encourage continuity of blood services. We have also offered many free parking agreements for front line staff in facilities in city centre locations including Liverpool and London amongst others.
We have extended our support to Central Government with the offer to use of our car parks for other activities to assist in the fight against COVID-19 and this offer will remain open for the duration of the crisis.
For all the latest information on our operation during COVID-19 please click here.
Q-Park is one of the three leading providers of parking facilities in West Europe, whether wholly-owned, leased, managed or in a hybrid business model. Q-Park is notable for its quality approach and has a portfolio comprising over 454,000 parking spaces in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Great Britain, France, Ireland and Denmark.
