Giltbrook Shopping Park, Nottingham: Shops, Parking, Directions and Opening Times

A free-parking retail park north-west of Nottingham, built by British Land and opened in October 2008 on the site of some empty offices next door to IKEA. The IKEA is not part of it. It is a separate 285,000 sq ft store on separate land that opened months earlier — even though the road is called Ikea Way, the park’s own website lists IKEA among its shops, and the creche, the mobility scooters and both electric car chargers are inside IKEA rather than on the park. Here is what the owner publishes, where the tenants’ opening times contradict the park’s, and the one measurement a driver actually needs that nobody publishes at all.

Last checked 8 September 2026 · Opening times and store lists change — check with the centre before travelling.

Giltbrook Shopping Park sits on Ikea Way at Giltbrook, a village in Broxtowe about five miles north-west of Nottingham and a couple of miles off the M1. It is an open park of the ordinary British sort — big boxes round a car park, Marks and Spencer at one end, restaurants along one side, and a very large blue and yellow furniture shop looming over it from the next plot. It opened in October 2008.

The web address in most directories is right, which is not something we can always say. giltbrookshoppingpark.com is genuinely this park: it carries the Ikea Way address, the NG16 2RP postcode and the phone number 0115 938 6138. What we could not do is read most of it. The homepage loaded twice for us on 8 September 2026 and every single inner page refused — hours, getting here, FAQs and the store directory — because the site’s own robots file would not resolve. Those pages exist and are indexed; we simply could not see them, and the usual fallback of an archived copy was blocked too. So much of what follows comes from the landlord’s letting listings, the council’s planning documents, the engineers who built the place and the tenants’ own store pages, rather than from the park.

The question everybody asks about Giltbrook is whether the IKEA is part of it, and the answer is no. British Land describes its own asset as “a regional retail park, situated adjacent to a 285,000 sq ft IKEA superstore”. IKEA does not appear in the 21-unit schedule that makes up the park’s 198,000 sq ft — and a 285,000 sq ft store could not fit inside it if it tried. The paper trail is below, because the two are so tangled in practice that the park’s own website treats IKEA as one of its shops.

The owner is British Land, holding the park through Giltbrook Retail Park Nottingham Limited, registered at British Land’s own head office in Triton Street. What nobody publishes is who manages it day to day: the letting agent says in terms that it does not deal with parking enforcement or CCTV and that you should read the signs in the car park to find out who does. The managing agent’s name, in other words, exists on a bollard.

Where two sources disagree — and here they disagree about floor area, shop count, parking spaces, the distance to the motorway and what time it opens on a Sunday — we have printed both and said who published each. Where nobody publishes anything at all, including the height limit on a sunken car park, we say so.

In the absence of identifiable sites within or on the edge of the existing centres of Eastwood and Kimberley, this site at Giltbrook represents the next most sustainable option for bulky comparison goods retail development.

The essentials

Opening times

Checked on 8 September 2026. The park’s dedicated hours page could not be read, so the core hours above come from the operator’s homepage, which we did manage to load twice. Everything else comes from the tenants’ own store-finder pages, published by the retailers rather than the park.

Sunday is a genuine mess and we are not resolving it

The park says it opens at 10am on Sunday. Not one of the five tenants we checked opens before 11am. Next, JD Sports, Mamas & Papas and IKEA all say 11am to 5pm; Starbucks, small enough to be exempt, says 8am. England’s Sunday trading rules cap large shops at six hours, which fits 11am to 5pm exactly and does not fit 10am to 5pm. We will not say the park is wrong — it may well open its car park and restaurants at ten while the big units stay shut another hour. But if you are going for a shop rather than a coffee, aim for eleven.

Weekday closing is not uniform either

The park says 8pm Monday to Saturday. Next stays open until 9pm on weekdays and 8.30pm on Saturday; JD Sports shuts at 7pm on Saturday; Mamas & Papas at 7pm on weekdays; Starbucks opens at 7am, two hours before anything else. The operator acknowledges the pattern in one line, saying some food retailers close later and naming Nando’s, Pizza Express and Frankie & Benny’s.

Christmas, New Year and bank holidays

The park publishes nothing — no festive schedule, no bank holiday times, in any form. The only holiday time on this page belongs to IKEA next door, at 9am to 7pm. On a public holiday, ring 0115 938 6138 or check the retailer.

Getting there

By road

Use NG16 2RP. The junction is M1 Junction 26, printed here because two independent sources say so and one is the owner: British Land’s scheme listing places the park “approximately 2 miles west of M1 Junction 26” and “roughly 5 miles northwest of Nottingham’s city centre”, while Marks and Spencer’s announcement for its store says 1.5 miles from the same junction. We cannot reconcile the half-mile, and the park’s own directions page would not load, so both are printed.

Parking

Parking is free, and the car park is unusual: a partially sub-merged deck, built that way to fit the spaces onto the site. The operator calls it the underground car park, says it opens in line with store hours, and gives “over 2,500” spaces and 65 Blue Badge bays. The steelwork contractor’s record of the original build says approximately 900. Nobody explains the difference, so both are here.

No height restriction is published for it by anybody. That is a real problem on a sunken deck and it is the one thing we would most like to tell you. Nor is there a published time limit, tariff or enforcement contractor — the letting agent disclaims parking enforcement and points at the signs on site.

By bus

We could not source a single route number, and we are not going to invent one. Broxtowe’s 2012 retail background paper confirms a service exists — “fairly frequent linking Eastwood and the surrounding areas ... to the South West (Giltbrook Retail Park, and Nottingham City Centre)” — but names neither operator nor route, and the park’s own travel page could not be read. Check the local journey planners before relying on the bus.

By train

There is no station at Giltbrook and no source publishes a railhead for the park — not the operator, owner, agents or any tenant. Other write-ups name one; none cite anybody, so we have left it blank rather than send you to the wrong platform.

By tram and by bike

The Nottingham tram network does not reach Giltbrook and nobody claims it does. The operator says there is a cycle lane around the perimeter of the park, but no cycle parking or racks are mentioned by any source — a slightly odd combination.

Accessibility

What the operator publishes: 65 accessible parking bays, accessible toilets at the customer service hub between Nando’s and Pizza Express which it calls stoma-friendly, baby changing, a 24-hour security team and first-aid-trained staff. Mobility scooters are hired from IKEA, not the park, and so is the creche — which matters, because their hours differ on almost every day of the week.

No Changing Places toilet is claimed by anyone, and no Shopmobility scheme exists beyond IKEA’s scooters. We could not check AccessAble or Euan’s Guide this run, so treat the above as the operator’s summary rather than an audited one, and ring ahead if a facility decides your trip.

The shops

The anchors, with the landlord’s own floor areas

• Marks and Spencer — 30,100 sq ft, including an 11,000 sq ft foodhall
• DFS — 16,820 sq ft
• Barker and Stonehouse — 15,000 sq ft
• Sofology — 9,625 sq ft
• PureGym — 8,869 sq ft

British Land also lists Boots, TK Maxx, Next and Next Home, Decathlon and Mamas & Papas; the operator’s homepage adds ScS and JD Sports. A third-party directory adds Pets at Home at unit 11 and Subway — a directory rather than the operator, so labelled as such.

Eating and leisure

Nando’s, Pizza Express, Frankie & Benny’s, Starbucks and Subway, plus PureGym. The engineers who designed the northern section also record a microbrewery and children’s soft play there. Starbucks opens earliest, at 7am on weekdays.

Wilko is still on both listings and Wilko no longer exists

Wilko is on British Land’s current occupier list and on the park’s own homepage, which even cites a cash machine “at Wilko”. The chain collapsed in 2023 and no Wilko trades anywhere in Britain. We found no dated closure notice for the Giltbrook store, so we will not say when the unit went dark or what is in it now — only that the listings online, the landlord’s included, are out of date here.

Recent work: a unit cut in two

A landlord enabling project has cut one unit into two, with PureGym on the ground floor and Bensons for Beds on a new first floor reached by a goods lift, split by a structural mezzanine with fire and acoustic barriers. The contractor published it in August 2026. No completion or opening date is given anywhere, and we are not converting a publication date into one.

What could not be sourced at all

Nothing dated. No letting announcements, no opening dates, no closure notices, no trade-press coverage of a single deal here. For a 198,000 sq ft asset owned by a FTSE landlord that is unusual,.

Useful to know

Is the IKEA part of the shopping park? No.

IKEA Nottingham is a neighbour, not a tenant of this scheme, and the evidence is clear once you go looking.

• British Land’s own letting material calls its asset “a regional retail park, situated adjacent to a 285,000 sq ft IKEA superstore”.
• IKEA is not in the 21-unit schedule that makes up the park’s 198,000 sq ft, and a 285,000 sq ft store cannot sit inside a 198,000 sq ft park.
• They were consented separately. Broxtowe’s Local Plan of 2004 records “Nottingham Road, Giltbrook: 23,225 sq m non-food floorspace granted by the Secretary of State; developed as an Ikea store, Decathlon and Next”, then allocates the shopping park as a different site, “on site of former Dyggor Gaylord offices, adjacent to Ikea (non-food goods only)”.
• They opened at different times: IKEA “opened early 2008”, the retail park “opened Oct 2008” (council, 2012). The steelwork contractor says the site “adjoined existing IKEA, NEXT and Decathlon outlets already operating in the area”.

And yet in practice the line is thoroughly blurred, which is why the question keeps being asked. The road is Ikea Way and every tenant uses it as an address; the park’s homepage lists IKEA first among its shops; the creche, the scooter hire, a cash machine and both EV charging pods are inside IKEA. And Decathlon and Next sit on the wrong side of the historic line — built under IKEA’s permission, listed today as the park’s occupiers. Where the freehold boundary runs is not published by anybody, so we have not drawn it.

Practical upshot: treat the hours separately. IKEA opens at 10am on weekdays when the park says 9am, closes at 9pm when the park says 8pm, and publishes bank holiday times when the park publishes none.

Three other Giltbrooks that are not this one

Directories mix the village’s estates freely. Giltbrook Industrial Park on Pentrich Road is a trade estate — Screwfix and a tyre depot are there, not on the shopping park. The Amber Trading Centre is another address in the same postcode district, and council documents refer to a Giltbrook Business Park as well. In August 2025 the council announced it had bought over an acre at Giltbrook for industrial units: nothing to do with this park.

Wi-Fi: two sources, flatly contradictory

The operator’s homepage states there is no Wi-Fi, no cinema and no post box. Marks and Spencer’s corporate announcement about its Giltbrook store describes the destination as offering “cafes, restaurants, retailers, children’s playground, free customer wifi, accessible facilities and baby changing services”. Both cannot be right and neither has been corrected. That same line asserts a playground, absent from the operator’s facilities list — though the engineers do record children’s soft play in the northern section, which may or may not be the same thing.

Things nobody publishes

No Changing Places toilet, dogs policy, lost property, quiet hours, gift card, coach parking or taxi rank could be confirmed by any source. That does not mean none exist — the operator’s pages that would say so were unreadable and no third party filled the gap. Ring 0115 938 6138 if one decides your trip.

How it got here

The site was the former Dyggor Gaylord offices, allocated for non-food bulky goods retailing by Broxtowe’s 2004 Local Plan and later described by the scheme’s engineers as “an existing long standing undeveloped site”. The allocation was explicit: to complement the adjacent IKEA retail park, because nowhere suitable existed inside Eastwood or Kimberley.

The IKEA came first: a permission for 23,225 sq m of non-food floorspace granted by the Secretary of State produced the IKEA store together with Decathlon and Next, and IKEA opened in early 2008. British Land’s park opened on the adjoining plot in October 2008.

The build is unusually well documented, by its contractors rather than its developer. A £70 million development for British Land as both client and developer, designed by Corstorphine & Wright, built by McLaren Construction, with 900 tonnes of steel by Caunton Engineering across nine buildings — fourteen shops and three business units — about 900 parking spaces and an expectation of up to 1,000 local jobs. That 80,000 sq ft of employment space alongside 150,000 sq ft of retail is why the floor-area figures never quite match: part of what was built was never shops.

The car park is the interesting engineering: to get the numbers onto the site the scheme was given a partially sub-merged decked car park and an extensive sustainable drainage system with hydrocarbon interception, while the northern section took the leisure and industrial elements, a microbrewery and children’s soft play. The engineers’ project page tells you more about how this park works than any press release did.

Ownership has not changed since it was built. Giltbrook Retail Park Nottingham Limited was incorporated on 2 June 2005 as Almondcroft Limited — a shelf company, renamed on 19 January 2007 as the scheme came together — and is still active at 20 Triton Street. Its person with significant control since 6 April 2016 is BL Retail Warehousing Holding Company Limited, at the “75% or more” band. No sale of this park has ever been reported, and no price, yield or rent roll published.

Where Giltbrook does appear in British Land’s own material is as a photograph: its Retail Park Investor Day presentation of 19 September 2023 uses it to illustrate a “hybrid” park — mid-sized, wide retailer mix, unrestricted use. That last phrase sits oddly against a site permitted for non-food goods only, which the council in 2012 described as carrying “a planning condition ... which prevents any of the retail units being used for food goods”. There is now an 11,000 sq ft Marks and Spencer foodhall here. How the two were reconciled is not published anywhere, and we will not guess.

If you want more of the same sort of thing in the East Midlands, Fosse Park at Leicester is the region’s heavyweight, East Midlands Designer Outlet is the outlet option off the M1 to the north, and Rushden Lakes is the newer, greener take on the format.