The landlord and landlady of a pub where the car park fills up before it even opens say they may have to install a barrier or implement a new ticket system because of the situation. Since the pandemic when a camera system monitoring the car park was removed, the husband and wife duo at the helm of The Manvers Arms in Cotgrave say it has reached a stage where their staff and customers struggle to find a space.
And they're now seriously considering putting in place new measures to stop non-customers from using the car park. In recent days pub staff uploaded a photo to Facebook which showed the car park completely full, before the pub had even been able to open for the day.
The post read: "Before we even opened the pub, our car park is full. We fought to remove the ticket system during and after coronavirus in the car park, but this is ridiculous as our staff and customers need to use this car park.
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"We don’t want to put a barrier or ticket system [in place] due to school drops off in a morning however if this carries on then we will have to as you are leaving us with no option."
Pub staff are keen that parents continue to use the pub car park to drop off their children on the school run, before the pub is open in the morning, but are considering measures to stop members of the general public turning up and leaving their cars all day.
Landlady of the pub Vicky Wright explained she and husband Steve, who took over the pub in 2020, were faced with a difficult situation - not wanting to block public access to the car park, in a town where parking is very limited, but feeling their hands were being forced to make changes.
She described the current situation as “really difficult” for the family-run pub, with the need to ensure their staff and customers can park. She said: “Yesterday (Wednesday, June 28) morning our staff couldn’t park and neither could our customers. If there’s a wake or something on then the last thing we want is people to be worrying about parking.
“We don’t know if it’s people parking and then going into town on the bus. I don’t know what it is but they seem to be there all day.
“The battle we have now is we either have a camera system back in place, but then if that’s active all the time we don’t open until 12 which means the parents in the morning can’t use it for the school run.
“We don’t want to have to shut the car park. We don’t want to upset people, we have got a good relationship with the school but this is sort of forcing our hand now.”
The previous camera had presented problems. Mrs Wright said: “People used to come in and put their registration in, so we had that but the issue was the system kept going down but the tickets were still being issued.
“All of our time staff were dealing with people that got tickets that shouldn’t have. We had to really fight to get rid of it and then once it was gone people respected the car park and it was really good.
“People could use it for drop off as the school is next door. We are a community pub, we do everything for the community, we raise money, we do all the events, we do kids days.”
Mrs Wright added that there were park and ride facilities in the town and nearby for those wanting to go into Nottingham, but this didn’t include at their pub, as it only has space for around 40 cars.
Meanwhile, people in the town had their say on the general parking situation. Retired Susan Sutton, 70, of Cotgrave, said: “There are two park and rides as well, so they should not be excessively parking at The Manvers. The pub are being extremely generous allowing people to park there and it’s good for the school people for people picking up and dropping off.”
When asked about the pub letting parents specifically park there, retired Gordon Halliday, 74, said: “It’s good; the only time that they are doing is is around 9 O’clock and 3 O’clock so it doesn’t affect the pub.”
