hospital parking

[Steve]

I drive past a hospital on my way to / home from work every day.

There are ALWAYS cars parked at the side of the road, in a long line. Its a busy road, and theres a school directly opposite the hospital. This creates havoc when the school throws out, its a wonder nobody's been killed yet.

The thing is, every hospital seems to have a problem with parking! So,

1. Why are NHS car parks prohibitively expensive (even out of town hospitals)?
2. Why dont they learn a lesson and build bigger, cheaper car parks?

The NHS is supposed to provide health care to people that is free at the point of delivery. IT DOESN'T!

 

[dextrous]

I find it an insult that you have to pay at all. Seems an unpleasant opportunistic way of adding to what is most likely to be an unpleasant and stressful moment in your life anyway.

 

[securespark]

Just been to the Manchester Royal Eye Hospital today: The nearest space I could find that was FOC was on-street 1.6 miles from the hospital.

If I had found a space in the NHS car parks near there, it would have cost me £4.00.

 

[conny]

Aintree Hospital £2.00 for as long as you like.

Walton Hospital there's a man with a plot of land in the grounds charges £1.00 for as long as you like, think the 'official' car park is so much per hour.

 

[Space cat]

I drive past a hospital on my way to / home from work every day.

There are ALWAYS cars parked at the side of the road, in a long line.

Now THAT sounds familiar. It's the same here. We have three hospitals and not nearly enough parking facilities. Actually, we have parking problems all over the city and the reason, I think, is that we have two universities. When I was a student, you aspired to a moped. Now they all seem to have cars. You can always spot the house full of students because there are six cars parked outside.

But I digress. Our hospitals have inadequate and overpriced parking with the inevitable result that every free parking space within walking distance is taken. Some of the more intrepid ones will happily walk a mile to find a space. Good for them I suppose - as long as they don't park outside my house.

Why are NHS car parks prohibitively expensive (even out of town hospitals)?

In our case it's because they aren't NHS car parks. Our hospital trust sold its car parks to private operators.

PS: It gets worse. A few years ago they got rid of all the TVs in the wards and allowed a bunch of money grubbing parasites called Patientline to put theirs in - and charge patients to watch them! It's bad enough being a patient without somebody ripping you off as you watch TV. Now that IS sick!

 

[AndrewSchofield]

We've been in and out of Sheffield Children's hospital this year with our 3yr old son (nothing serious) but the car park there holds about 20 cars if that, so we have to allow an hour each time we go to find somewhere to park. I'm sure they're happy that this encourages people to use public transport but we live nearly 30miles from the hospital so this just isn't possible for us. Besides which, on at least one occasion the letter we've had confirming the appointment has indicated that it is not acceptable to take our son home via public transport. The nearest car park is at the Hallamshire hospital and last time we used that it costs us nearly £7.

It seems they can build supermarkets and retail outlets out-of-town where there's space for loads of free car parking - why not force the likes of Tesco and McArthur glen to build-in hopsital facillities to these out of town developments when granting their planning approvals? The shops may even benefit long term from increased custom from visitors to patients in the hospital??

 

[EddieM]

I'd move to Scotland or Wales if I were you.