Loughborough UCU

Tag: Lboro Campus

  • Have Your Say: Commuter Travel & Car Parking Survey Now Open

    Over the past few months, we have been building a collective response to the growing concerns around car parking and commuting at Loughborough University.

    We began by highlighting the likely impact of new student accommodation on parking capacity in Central and East Park. We then invited staff to share their experiences, concerns, and suggested solutions, and you responded in large numbers. Your feedback made clear just how significant these issues are for colleagues across the University.

    Now, we are taking the next step.

    Help Shape Our Demands

    We have developed a Commuter Travel & Car Parking Survey to better understand which solutions are most supported by staff.

    Your responses will directly inform:

    • The demands we take to the University
    • A forthcoming open letter, setting out these demands and inviting staff to show their support

    This is a crucial opportunity to ensure that our campaign reflects the views and priorities of staff as strongly and accurately as possible.

    The survey is open to all staff and should only take a few minutes to complete.

    Why Your Voice Matters

    Decisions about parking, commuting, and campus development affect us all, whether you drive, car share, cycle, use public transport, or combine multiple ways of getting to work.

    By completing the survey, you will be helping us to:

    • Identify the most widely supported solutions
    • Strengthen our position by providing additional details
    • Build a united, collective voice across staff

    The stronger the response, the harder it will be for the University to ignore.

    Please Take Part and Share

    We encourage to complete the survey today and to share the survey with your colleagues, in your teams and informal networks. The more staff who take part, the more representative, and impactful, our campaign will be.

    Click here to complete the survey, you can also copy this link to share the survey with colleagues.

    Together, we can ensure that staff voices are heard and that future decisions on commuting and parking are fair, sustainable, and workable for everyone.

    Thank you for your support.

  • LUCU Pre AGM Social

    Join us in B007 – Brockington for a branch social.

    This will be immediately followed by the branch AGM in the same room.

    Come along and meet your fellow members and the branch committee. Food and light refreshments will be provided.

    Check your emails or see this article for more information https://ucu.lboro.ac.uk/come-to-the-lucu-agm-and-branch-social/

  • LUCU Meet and Greet at the Staff Fair – 14 May

    IMPORTANT UPDATE: The Staff Fair (and therefore our Meet and Greet) has been postponed by the University – we will update you with the new date when it is provided.

    Loughborough UCU will be at the University Staff Fair on Thursday 14 May, 10am–12pm, and we’d love you to come and say hello.

    We’ll be hosting a Loughborough UCU Meet and Greet at our stall in the James France Exhibition Area. This is a great opportunity for current members to drop by, catch up, and meet and chat informally with branch committee members and activists about the work UCU is doing locally and nationally.

    If you’re not yet a UCU member but are interested in finding out more, you’re very welcome too. Come along to ask questions, find out how UCU supports staff at Loughborough, and learn how to get involved if you wish.

    Whether you’re new to the university or have been here a while, please feel free to stop by, we look forward to meeting you.

  • LUCU Meet and Greet at the Staff Fair

    LUCU Meet and Greet at the Staff Fair

    IMPORTANT UPDATE: The Staff Fair (and therefore our Meet and Greet) has been postponed by the University – we will update you with the new date when it is provided.

    Loughborough UCU will be at the University Staff Fair on Thursday 14 May, 10am–12pm, and we’d love you to come and say hello.

    We’ll be hosting a Loughborough UCU Meet and Greet at our stall in the James France Exhibition Area. This is a great opportunity for current members to drop by, catch up, and meet and chat informally with branch committee members and activists about the work UCU is doing locally and nationally.

    If you’re not yet a UCU member but are interested in finding out more, you’re very welcome too. Come along to ask questions, find out how UCU supports staff at Loughborough, and learn how to get involved if you wish.

    Whether you’re new to the university or have been here a while, please feel free to stop by, we look forward to meeting you.

  • Parking at Loughborough: What You Told Us and What Happens Next

    Members highlight widespread stress, inequity, and lost working time.

    Recently, UCU invited colleagues to share their experiences of parking and campus travel. We would like to thank the many members who provided extensive feedback on this issue.

    We received many dozens of pages of written comments from academic and professional services staff across multiple Schools and departments, representing a wide range of roles, contracts, working patterns and commuting circumstances.

    The message from these responses was clear: members feel that parking and campus travel arrangements have become significantly more difficult in recent years, and due to the new accommodation building project the situation is worse than ever.

    What Staff Told Us

    While experiences vary by location and arrival time, the vast majority of feedback we received suggested that the current system is:

    • Unpredictable: staff often do not know whether parking will take two minutes or twenty, with knock-on effects for scheduling and on-campus availability.
    • Stressful: many staff report starting the day more anxious or frustrated than was previously the case.
    • Inequitable: negative effects fall disproportionately on certain groups, such as staff with caring responsibilities; some colleagues reported additional childcare costs incurred simply to arrive early enough to secure parking.
    • Structural: linked to policy changes, reduced capacity, and insufficient alternatives.
    • Work Effectiveness: parking difficulties contribute to staff being late to teaching and meetings, lost time & increased preference for working from home (to avoid parking stress).
    • Safety:concerns were also raised about walking across campus after dark, congested roads and insufficient secure bike storage.

    Many colleagues reported that if they arrive after 9am, finding a space becomes significantly harder. It is common to spend 10–20 minutes or more searching for parking in high-demand areas.

    Recurring concerns in the feedback included:

    • Competition between staff, students, visitors, and external users.
    • Loss of nearby parking capacity and increased reliance on distant car parks.
    • Shuttle services that are described as unreliable or impractical, notwithstanding recently announced improvements.
    • Rising parking charges alongside worsening availability.

    What Staff Want to See

    The most common suggestions for practical improvements included:

    • Better management of student and visitor parking near workplaces and prioritising staff parking in high-demand areas. 
    • Improved distribution of staff-centred parking capacity aligned with where staff work.
    • More reliable shuttle services for cases when distant parking remains necessary.
    • Investment in active travel, including safer cycling routes and secure bike storage.
    • Consideration of longer-term infrastructure solutions where appropriate.

    Some colleagues emphasised sustainability and reducing car use overall. However, even these responses acknowledged that current alternatives are not yet reliable or practical enough for many staff.

    University Responses So Far

    Student parking is now limited to car parks 1 (multi-storey), 7 (Robert Bakewell), and Holywell, and this is enforced using cameras. A significant number of short-stay spaces by the swimming pool have been returned to normal use.  These measures have helped to ease pressure in East Park.

    We are told that problems are most acute Tuesday to Thursday during semesters 1 and 2.  Those who have the option are encouraged to help spread demand through the week by moving office days to Monday and Friday.

    Management are hopeful that the temporary car parks near Towers will become available again after a period of fair weather, however these will always remain weather dependent and so are not reliable, especially during semesters 1 and 2 when demand is high.

    We are assured that only on open days does the demand for parking outstrip the capacity on campus, and that there is always parking available, usually in the multi-storey and at Holywell Park. However, this clearly does not address the issue of the extra 40-60 minutes of travel time it would take to park at Holywell and travel to and from East Park if that were necessary, or the inequity around who this is likely to impact most.

    Management have been explicit in saying that this time spent travelling across campus does not count as working hours – meaning that individuals are expected to take a significant hit to their own time as a result of the recent changes.  This cannot be acceptable.

    Support for a Campaign and How to Get Involved

    While pay, workload and pensions remain core union priorities, many colleagues emphasised that parking problems are materially affecting daily working lives and supported UCU campaigning on this issue.

    We can work together to improve car parking, but more work will be needed to communicate the strength of feeling on this issue to management. If you would like to help shape next steps, please contact our Branch Organiser, Callum Salfield.

    Parking should not be a daily source of stress, inequity or lost time. Thank you again to everyone who contributed – and we will keep you updated.

  • New student accommodation and implications for parking in Central and East Park

    The LUCU Committee are supportive of plans for increasing on-campus student accommodation ready for academic year 27-28, comprising 5 new blocks and 552 beds.  There have been serious shortages of student housing recently, forcing some students to commute from Leicester and Nottingham – significantly impacting their enjoyment of being here.  We also know that on-campus accommodation is a popular part of the Loughborough Experience for students, and has been a crucial income stream helping to keep our financial outlook more stable than those Universities that cashed theirs in.  This sort of well-targeted investment contrasts with the sort of “vanity project” spending that other union branches blame for the dire situations being faced by their members.

    The new accommodation blocks will be built on many areas currently used for parking – especially car park 5, between our union offices and the walled garden.  While some extra parking will be provided close to Towers we will still be losing 120 spaces in an area of campus where colleagues already struggle, causing significant stress and lost time.  The new spaces are also classified as “temporary”, albeit without a known expiration date, meaning that we will likely lose them at some point when longer-term plans are made for the area.

    Management’s argument is always that there is sufficient parking on campus, and that the multi-storey and Holywell Park always have spaces.  While this is true, using these car parks when coming to Central and East parks will add significant travel time to cross campus, and necessitate use of very unpredictable bus services.  We do not think this is realistic or acceptable.

    We have been very clear that while the new halls are welcome staff should not bear such a significant cost to make them possible.  The University must also invest in sufficient parking for East and Central park.

    The images below show an artist’s impression of the project, and the significant changes to campus roads which will begin in January, for the duration of the build, for your information.