Meadowhall making parent/guardian & child places permit only

[strawthatbrokethecamelsback]

I’ve never heard of anyone doing this before, will be interesting to see how and if they police it.

is this a good thing? I have 4 year old twins, and to be honest it’s not as important for us now they’re a bit older but when we had their massive pram and getting car seats in and out of the car it was so helpful to have the extra space

https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/whats-on/shopping/meadowhall-introduces-new-permit-policy-27455543.amp

I had to have a permit for one of my local shopping centre car parks 17 years ago. I never really used it, and then never renewed it once my other children were born.

I can see the merits of it, however due to where Meadowhall is it gets a lot of one off visitors, hopefully it will be as straightforward as they claim.

I'm surprised they need any parking restrictions at all. There's no shops left.

thats a very good point, I was there this week, promised my girls we'd go to the disney store not realising it had closed 2 years ago 😂

Well it's likely to deter families like mine where Meadowhall is not somewhere we're likely to go regularly enough to need the effort of getting a permit, but is definitely in the vicinity enough for the odd random day out.

Somewhere like a local supermarket/retail park I could imagine it being a more effective measure where people are coming back regularly so yes, getting a permit is likely to be something that people will do for ease/consistency of getting a space... somewhere like Meadowhell where I only tend to go very rarely (usually when something Apple related has broken to be fair)... nah I wouldn't go to the bother.

Especially since RIP Paperchase :(

Saw someone on their Facebook page today say they had 2 kids close in age and found it ‘almost impossible’ to go out with them if she couldn’t park in parent and child 🤔

I think it’s a bit much to be honest. My DS is older now so don’t need them but when he was little, if one was free I’d park in it as it was closer but their carpark is huge, you could easily just park away from another car and open the door wide. They’re not a necessity like disabled spaces and I think people forget this.

Since when we're kids not able to walk?

Honestly 🙄

I thought of 4 reasons pretty quickly. I'm sure you could, too, if you tried.

@IwanttobeJessicaFletcher it’s nothing to do with kids being unable to walk. It’s the size of the spaces and the fact that it’s often very difficult to open the doors wide enough to get them in and out in normal spaces.

It's less about kids not being able to walk and more about how dangerous crossing car parks can be.
Personally I think there should be more pedestrian walkways across car parks and wider spaces throughout. That way it wouldn't be such a challenge for anyone to get safely around the car parks.

One huge problem is other people's parking combined with the size of modern cars. We've got back to the car and found someone else has parked so close it's a struggle to get in without damaging the neighbouring car.

I can see how that would be difficult to manage if you're on your own with a baby you need to get into the back of the car - I doubt many people would feel happy just leaving the pram and baby unattended while getting into the car and pulling out of the space. (I don't drive so always had DH with me in this situation)

When my DT’s were very young I had to take one of them to the hospital to have her brace refitted (for hip displasia). The parking was absolutely awful, no larger spaces except for disabled. When I came out 2 cars had parked so close to me I had absolutely no chance of getting my DD back into the car with her car seat. I had to ask a couple to watch her for 2 minutes whilst I backed the car out 😞