The University of Sussex is committed to ensuring that all staff and students are able to access all locations on campus. Part of this is providing a number of parking spaces strictly for the use of disabled staff and students.
The University currently has 10 car parks providing a total of 1,560 car parking spaces on campus.
An additional 137 spaces are solely allocated for disabled parking. Unless you are the holder of a valid disabled person badge - that is clearly displayed in your vehicle - you are not eligible to park in that space.
Recent findings by the Badger, the Sussex student newspaper, have found some alarming discrepancies with this issue on campus. One Sussex student, Aisling Murray, told the Badger about her experiences:
“I have to use my car to get onto campus every day because of my disability. So often I find that people are parked in disabled bays without a disabled badge or that disabled bays are filled with equipment for building work.
"On Monday I had to miss my lecture because I couldn’t find anywhere near enough to park. All the disabled bays were taken even though none of the cars had a disabled badge. By the time I had found somewhere to park it would have taken me the remainder of the lecture to walk across campus to get to it.”
Pete Humphreys, who recently investigated this issue for the Badger, said: ‘’Over one day I surveyed 94 disabled spaces of which 22 were occupied by vehicles without the correct stickers.’’
Sussex Estates and Facilities enforce these parking regulations on behalf of the University with the responsibility for the 1,560 spaces across campus.
Chris Wadey, who oversees this service as Transport Manager, said:
“We understand how frustrating it must be for any disabled bay to be unavailable for someone who needs it – particularly when they are taken up by non-disabled drivers.
“We are a large and busy campus which means it’s sometimes hard to enforce all vehicles so I would put out a plea to all staff and students to respect our parking policies and support everyone in our community.”