Car park charges are now live

What we’ve achieved so far in the Forest of Marston Vale wouldn’t have been possible without your donations and support, but in order to carry on maintaining our sites and planting more trees we need to step it up. We don’t get financial support from the local councils or the government – we rely entirely on donations and money raised through our Forest Centre & Millennium Country Park, which is why we’ve made the decision to charge for car parking, starting on Monday 4th June.

No charge for Friends of the Forest

Click here to join now

Friends of the Forest will automatically receive free parking as part of their membership and it won’t be a huge charge – we’re talking about between £1 - £3, depending on the length of your stay, but every £1 raised will help us to continue maintaining the Park and our other sites, and go towards our goal of another 5 million trees in the Forest. In a recent survey, we discovered that 93% of our visitors believe that more woodland is needed locally and we want to be the solution to that problem. We’ve already planted 1.5 million trees, housing thousands of species, improving people’s physical and mental health and improving the local economy by creating jobs and income to recreational businesses. We want to continue doing this good work for as long as possible, and in order to do this we simply need to raise more funds.

Help us to create more woodlands

Most visitor attractions charge for parking – we’ve resisted for as long as possible (18 years in fact) but times have changed. We estimate under the old scheme of a suggested £1 donation to park, that less than 5% of car park users actually did – so our new ANPR system makes it fairer to those who do pay, and means that we’ll be able to continue planting trees, and improving the local area for longer. With all of the development that is planned in the Forest over the coming years, we think it’s more important than ever for us to be the voice that’s reminding developers to stick to their obligation to plant trees on 30% of their land.

Prices

If you’d like to sign up to be a Friend of the Forest and receive free parking all year round (with the exception of the Forest Family Fun Day), as well as free entry to our Wetlands Trail for only £5 a month/£60 annually, you can sign up online now or email us for more info.

Regular prices

(all vehicles, excluding motorbikes, will be subject to these charges):

Up to 1 hour	£1
Up to 3 hours	£2
Over 3 hours	£3

Appealing a fine

If you feel you've been awarded a fine unfairly, then you need to contact SiP directly. You can appeal online or by post (click here for more details) - please do not post details of your fine on the comments below without giving us your contact details. If you would like to talk to us about an appeal which is ongoing with SiP then please send us an email or call 01234 767037.

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For more information, ask any questions below in the comments, send us an email or call 01234 767037.