Bournemouth Airport accused of blocking cheaper parking options

The airport is ‘doing a disservice to its customers’ by closing down cheaper parking options, the owner of Parley Lane Parking said.

Parley Lane Parking offers parking on the outskirts of the airport, at the Adventure Wonderland theme park, which it says costs roughly ‘half the price’.

It has recently submitted a retrospective application to BCP Council to 'regularise the use of the car park as it currently stands' - a proposal Bournemouth Airport has objected to.

• Read more: Huge expansion plans submitted for Bournemouth Airport

Russell Lucas, owner of Merritown Farm, parent company of Parley Lane Parking and Adventure Wonderland, said: “One of the things that they are objecting to is the fact that people are walking from the Adventure Wonderland car park to the airport.

“There's a pavement that goes from Adventure Wonderland all the way to the airport, but where there isn’t a pavement is when you get to the airport.

Adventure Wonderland is located in Merritown Lane, off Parley Lane (Image: Google Maps)

“If they want to talk about safety themselves, they really want to put in a pavement for all the pedestrian customers, who at the moment, have to walk on a dangerous muddy verge from the pedestrian crossing to the terminal building.

“Why don’t they? Because they’re trying to protect a monopoly over their car parking and a monopoly over the drop off.”

Russell added that Parley Lane Parking provides a free shuttle bus from Adventure Wonderland to the terminal, and so ‘only a tiny percentage' of people using the spaces are walking.

“In running that free shuttle bus, we absorb the £5 drop off charge that the airport gets, so it’s not like they’re not getting anything from us being competition.”, he said.

Russell also claimed that prior to Covid, Bournemouth Airport had rented out the same field Parley Lane Parking has earmarked for additional spaces.

The Daily Echo asked the airport whether this was true, but did not receive an answer.

Russell said: “I don’t know whether they ever had a serious intention of using it, because they never did - they never put a single car on it.

“Or, was it a way to stop competition? I can’t answer that for them, but it seems strange.

“Why didn’t they use it, and now, they’re objecting to the very car parking that they themselves rented prior to Covid.”

Russell said there was a ‘clear demand’ for parking, noting Bournemouth Airport recently submitted a planning application for an additional 900 parking spaces.

• Read more: Plans to add 900 car parking spaces at Bournemouth Airport

He told the Daily Echo: “They just don’t want that parking to go to anyone else.

“Primarily ought to be the interest of customers, and it is undoubtedly in the interest of customers to have competition for the parking, and I think the airport are doing a big disservice to their customers by closing any competition down.

“They are ruthlessly trying to crush any prospective competition.”

Adventure Wonderland is currently closed to the public as it goes through a ‘restructuring process’.

Parley Lane Parking's application for additional parking at the theme park is yet to be determined by BCP Council. 

A spokesman for Bournemouth Airport said: "We have strongly objected to both of these retrospective planning applications on the grounds that the parking is fundamentally unsafe because it encourages pedestrians along Parley Lane.

"And in our view it is also unneeded, is unsustainable, and causes harm to the Green Belt. We are not opposed to off-site parking in all circumstances, but we believe these applications represent the latest efforts to persist in inappropriate activity at the site, and our view is that they should very clearly be refused."