Park(ing) Life

James Garrett looks at the mushrooming of privately run car parks in the area around Bristol airport. As the airport plans to expand, these are only going to increase in number and size.....

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Bristol Airport’s new owner, the Australian bank, Macquarie, is understood to be about to apply for planning permission, intent on increasing the capacity at Lulsgate from last year’s total of 10.75million passengers per annum (mppa) to 15million.

Various sources have told Somerset Confidential they expect the planning application to be submitted to North Somerset Council (NSC) by the end of March.

Bristol Airport Limited (BAL) said in its annual report for 2024 that the application would be submitted last year. The delay may have been caused by the takeover of the airport last autumn from its previous owner, a Canadian teachers’ pension scheme.

One of the bigger questions facing Macquarie, nicknamed the ‘vampire kangaroo’ because of its controversial ownership of Thames Water and aggressive profit-taking strategy, is how it would accommodate all the additional vehicles which would need to be parked by nearly 50 percent more people than use the airport at present.

As we reported earlier this year ( you can read that here) Lulsgate is the largest airport in the UK without any mass transit link.

Infamously, Simon Calder, travel editor of The Independent, noted, “It is about as inconvenient as it is possible to be for anyone depending on public transport.”

In the absence of any direct train or light rail service - nor any prospect of either anytime soon - a bus, the A1 Airport Flyer, plies the nine-mile route from central Bristol. In addition, the A3 & A4 Flyers connect the airport with Weston-Super-Mare and Bath respectively. That’s it.

BAL’s most recent annual accounts, for the year ending 31 December 2024, noted, “The Airport saw a record number of journeys for the Airport Flyer bus service. The A1 carried more than 1million passengers. Combined with the A3, this increases to 1.3million.“

The airport handled a total of 10.5 million passengers that year, so just one in ten used public transport. West of England Mayor Helen Godwin acknowledges this is not enough. “Together, we can and must deliver the integrated transport system that people need and deserve.”

The Airport’s management certainly talks the talk. In its development ‘master plan’ for the next 15 years, published in 2025, it committed to “encourage as many people as possible to travel to the airport via public transport.”

At the same time, however, BAL is gearing up for increasing numbers of car drivers. It currently provides “just over 18,000 car parking spaces.”

Two new multi-storey car parks received planning permission in 2022 when the airport’s permitted annual capacity was increased from 10mppa to 12mppa.

When complete they will increase the official parking capacity to 22,300 spaces but, if it receives permission to handle 15mppa, BAL says it will need space for a further 3,000 cars.