Mum launches Give Me Space campaign after 90% of parents admit to feeling at risk in car parks

Mum of two and business owner Lisa Roberts has launched a new lobbying campaign called Give Me Space after 90% of parents admitted to feeling at risk in car parks.

Lisa became frustrated with the current state of parent car parking spaces and when speaking to other parents she knew she wasn't alone, so decided to do something about it.

She took on the challenge of interviewing 2,000 parents and caregivers and her findings showed that this is a problem noted by a huge percentage of people.

Lisa found that four in five parents were troubled by small and inefficient parent parking facilities and that a massive 83% of them actively wanted the government to do something about it.

Give Me Space is the name of Lisa's lobbying campaign, which is calling on government to put proper guidelines in place when it comes to parent parking spaces.

Lisa told Huffington Post UK, 'In the UK there are 1.2 million public parking spaces, of which 37,000 rightly allocated to disabled drivers.

'This allocation is based on a recommendation set out by the Department for Transport, based on the Equality Act 2010. The recommendation stipulates the location and dimensions of the spaces to best benefit their users.

'Currently, there is no official recommendation set out by government for parent and child spaces, forcing millions of parents to put their children, including unborn children, at risk. This is what the Give Me Space campaign hopes to change.'

Lisa has been gathering real life stories from parents who have struggled to keep their children safe in car parks, such as Liz Booth, who is a grandmother-of-two, 'When I realised that the adjacent car had parked so close to my car that there was no way I could get the baby's car seat through the gap I had two choices, either leave the baby with a stranger so I could reverse my car or give my car keys to a stranger and ask them to reverse it for me - neither were very appealing choices.'

The campaign has been receiving a lot of support on social media from parents and mum bloggers. Blogger Real Mum Reviews shared her personal story explaining why she's behind the campaign in a vlog on Twitter.

'I had an experience when I was pregnant which I found incredibly challenging. I was 39 weeks pregnant and went for my pre op assessment... when I got back to my car someone had parked about this far (shows small gap with fingers) away from me on the driver's side.

'As a heavily pregnant lady I had absolutely no chance of getting in. I had two options, wait for the driver to come back which could be hours or climb over the passenger seat - which I did. I was physically exhausted it was really really hard work. I got home and went into labour a week early... which could have been because I put a lot of pressure on my bump.'

Lisa is calling on parents to sign her petition and support her campaign to ensure that there is a minimum amount of parent parking spaces in car parks.