Parking on June Open Days

We’d like to remind you that we will be welcoming several thousand visitors to our Whiteknights and London Road campuses for our first Open Days of 2022 on Friday 17 and Saturday 18 June.

We are expecting more than 800 cars each day, and will be reserving car parks 1a, 2, 3, 4 7 and 8 for visitors to Whiteknights, and Whitegates car park for visitors to London Road.

This means that parking for staff will be extremely limited, with priority given to staff directly supporting on Open Day activities.  We are therefore asking all staff who work on the Whiteknights or London Road campuses, and who usually drive, to review their usual travel arrangements for Friday 17 June, and Saturday 18 June as appropriate.

Work from home

Colleagues who usually travel by car, don’t have any meetings planned and are set up to work from home are strongly encouraged to talk to their managers about working from home on Friday 17 June.

Travel by train with free bus ticket to Whiteknights campus

If colleagues need to come to campus and can travel by train, we strongly encourage you to do so. We will be putting on a free shuttle bus service to the university on Friday 17 and Saturday 18 June for Open Day visitors. Staff who need to work on campus are also welcomed to use this service and can pick that up from outside Reading train station.

Car share

For anyone else for whom driving to campus is the only option, there will be parking available for staff in the other car parks on campus on a first come, first served basis on both days.  We recommend you arrange to car share wherever possible.

During the Open Days we will of course free up car parking spaces where we can.  There will always be parking space in the main campus car parks for members of staff who hold blue badges and need disabled parking spaces.

On Open Day preparations, Professor Robert Van de Noort, Vice-Chancellor, said:

"I would like to thank everyone who is working to support our Open Days this year. They are critical to our recruitment plans and I am very grateful to everyone across the University who goes above and beyond to make the experience so positive for our visitors. We will continue to give  priority car parking to our visitors and those colleagues supporting the events.  So please plan now for your working arrangements on 17 and 18 June and do not drive to the Whiteknights or London Road campuses unless it is really necessary.”