WATCH: Inverness College students & staff facing parking charges

Inverness College students and staff could be charged to park on-site in the near future.

"After a series of incidents I think I need to take control of the car park" - INVERNESS COLLEGE PRINCIPAL

The campus boss wants to stamp out bad behaviour behind the wheel that’s led to near misses with pedestrians, and cars colliding over competition for limited spaces.

The Principal, Professor Chris O’Neil, has told MFR News that no decisions have been made yet. He told us: "We had a near miss - a student nearly run down, and potentially very, very seriously injured.

"We've had cars driving into each other fighting over car parking spaces.

"I had an interesting discussion with the head of one of our taxi companies here in Inverness about the behaviour of one of his guys who drove up onto a concourse in order to drop people off and wait.

"We've had delivery people doing similar.

"After a series of incidents I think I need to take control of the car park.

"Am I going to charge for car parking? Not sure.

"I met someone quite recently who told me with great delight that they drop off their car at Raigmore Hospital when they've driven down from Wick in order to get a taxi over to Inverness Airport and thus save the car parking charges there.

"People are using and abusing our car park when they go off on holiday.

"I've had incidents of my staff, my colleagues being given verbal abuse by people using the car park, and that's unacceptable.

"There's a named car parking space with my name on it, but I live that close that I ought to be catching the bus or walk in, so if we charge for parking I'll be paying for it, and giving up my parking space.

"If they designed the layout better there would be more spaces" - SHARON SCOBBIE

Yasmin Nicolle Dear posted on MFR's Facebook: "When I was a student there we had this problem, and the problem was the same at the old campuses as well, but there are a lot of people who use the car park at the uni and the car park at the hospital as a park and ride to go to work, or even leave it for weeks at a time and go on holiday.

"This is the issue that needs to be tackled at both the uni and the hospital.

"Students and staff have parking permits for the car park, those that park at the uni without one should be fined - simple.

Fiona Gunn commented: "I think this is absolutely disgusting. Our students struggle enough and most have to travel in at the cost of fuel due to location.

"Now they’re expecting some to possibly miss a day of lunch to pay parking charges.

"I hope this can be added on to bursary/student loans - that’s a lot of money over a year for a full time student

Sharon Scobbie added: " Most people travel to college from a distance where public transport is difficult.

"If they designed the layout better there would be more spaces."