How St Helier Hospital cured its car parking problem

It can sometimes be difficult to know how long a hospital visit will last, so pre-payment is not the best option. For example, a recent visit to A&E at my local hospital took only 20 minutes whereas an appointment two days later took well over 2 hours. Commonsense suggests that we need a system that allows the visitor to pay the appropriate amount when leaving the car park.

There should also be the facility to pay at a later date. Getting someone to hospital may be a higher priority than finding change for a parking meter.

I’ve been looking after my wife who had a hip replacement and (luckily) she is covered by insurance so the operation and phisiotherapy have been at the local Spire hospital. The don’t charge for parking and I’ve never had a problem finding a space. That has been a great reduction in hassle and I’ve been very grateful for it.

I think part of the problem with the NHS is that as all medical treatment is free and they are always short of money they HAVE to charge for everything that doesn’t breach the guidelines. Wouldn’t it be better if the income from car parking could be covered some other way and the need for machines and having change and time to walk about and pay and display and all that were done away with?

What an encouraging response to your parking problem! It’s fantastic to hear about a hospital maangement team that genuinely engages with its service users to help design a range of improvements.I am not alone in Edinburgh to have recently experienced the added stress of over £100 in hospital parking charges when admitted. My husband, trying to maintain a semblance of family life, was in and out of the car park umpteen times and managed to repeatedly trigger optimal charges. At Sick Kids, the management have tried to work with the Council to reduce parking stress, but it remains an added burden for families who are coping with plenty already. Well done St Helier’s.

I have just been reading through this report on the Hospital car parks and would like to have seen it include the car parks in Scotland. I know most of them are now free but there are still ones in Scotland where you have to pay. My local one – Ninewells hospital, Dundee – charges exorbitant fees and does not allow people to even drop off patients without charging them

My mother was in St Helier for 12 days following an operation. Our experience of the car park was:
1. We always found a space and rarely had to queue to get in.
2. The machines either don’t give change for notes (we didn’t see a notice saying so) or they were out of change – unlikely. Robbed us twice. We couldn’t find anyone after 6pm to sort out a refund.
3. A visit cost us about £4 or £5 each tiime. For frequent visitors this is too much and we did not qualify for a discount.
4. Finding £1 coins is a pain. Didn’t see a credit card machine.
5. 20 minutes free parking is too short. What can you do in that time? If it were 1 hr people could do a short visit and leave. This would encourage people not to stay longer than they need. If you want to stay on it was good to know that every 1/2 hour would cost another £1.

I am disappointed that your survey only covers England, the rest of the UK has the same problems.
At our local hospital, Altnagelvin, Londonderry, many staff arrive between 8.00am and 9.am and overflow the staff car parks. There is then not enough parking left for the rest; out patients, visitors etc. Most car parks are free, but this attracts non hospital parkers which compounds the problem.
The two small pay parks also fill up quickly.
The solution that the local Trust appear to favour is to introduce more pay car parks for visitors and out patients. Staff are also part of the problem arriving with one person per car, but the trust do not appear to grasp this thorny problem.

good job iv got a 4×4 you need you have to off road to park at the QE at kingslynn in Norfolk!

Without commenting on the details, ‘Which’ deserve a big thank you for making a very positive contribution to easing this nation-wide source of feeling ‘unfair’. It makes Hospital administrators appear greedy,unsympathetic and, bureaucratic, and leaves recipients of the service feeling very hard done by. Let’s hope this example is the first of many to consult, learn and amend.

The idea of cycling to hospital is fine if you’re fit and live locally to the hospital you’re visiting. Unfortunately for many the hospital is some miles away and it is often the case that the older you get the more likely you are to need to be hospitalised or attend as an outpatient. This also makes cycling less than viable for partners and friends as they may well be less than fit themselves so unable to cycle. If we could avoid the exorbitant charges we have had to pay recently, when both my husband and myself have been attending regularly, we would.

Parking at QA Cosham, Hampshire has improved a little since the main building work has finished but still needs to improve. There is often insufficient space in the main car park and not enough monitoring of the very few pick-up/drop-off spaces so they get abused.

As for cycling, I am 68 and take my 90 year old mother 25 miles to the hospital over the South Downs and back. Not a practical solution.

It seems to have been missed by the accountants and lawyers that ran the NHS that stress causes or exacerbates illness. Therefore all the organisational stress surrounding hospital procedures may be costing money in terms of generating more illness that the health service has to spend money curing. Maybe now that GPs are calling the tune this will change.

We mustn’t forget the staff needs as well. It is economic madness to pay consultants £50 an hour (or more) then expect then to park 15minutes walk from the hospital, if they can find a space at all. No private company I know of does this. William Harvey at Ashford is one such hospital.

I’ve been to Epsom Hospital every day for the last 3 weeks (part of Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust) and used the car park. If the car parks have improved, I’m glad I didn’t have to go last year!
Of those 3 weeks, on only two days have both pay machines been working, and for only 3 or 4 days have both entrance gates been working.
The layout of the parking spaces is tricky to say the least, the spaces are narrow.
The entrance is poorly signposted and you have to negoiate a strange slalom to enter.
As the prices are high and cards are not accepted you need a large amount of change, with no facility to get any. We attempted to use the ‘notes’ facility once but it didn’t work.
Having said that we have always been able to find a space.

I have been working extensively in South Korea for the last few years, and am used to their use of number plate recognition technology on nearly all public parking places apart from street parking.

They also use it on their expressways, which are mostly toll roads, and this speeds up the queues at the toll booths. Barriers are not required, because your number plate has been photographed and you will be fined if you leave without paying.

In both these cases there are polite, uniformed attendants at the pay booths that will either charge you the appropriate rate, or accept a fee waiver if one has been provided.

In any case, you only pay for what you have used and there is no need for clamping and abuse from officiious .parking attendants

Dear Sirs
As a recent visitor to St Helier hospital I would like to give you my first hand impression of the car parking.
On busy days like Monday mornings the car park barrier indicates that the car park is full yet when you gain entry you find there are plenty of spaces, yet the queue is back to the road.
Concessionary car park tickets can only be obtained if the person you would like to visit has been in the hospital for more than 2 weeks (official from the nurses)
I personally found 1 one notice about concessions and that was very difficult to see,
you really have to know about the concessions before you go to the hospital.

I’m really disappointed that St. Helier has taken to political ‘save the planet’ measures rather than having compassion on the people who really need it. My husband was desperately sick and hospitalised for three and a half months last year: he nearly died several times. He started in St. Helier Hospital for 13 days and was distressed every time I left him. I was there for around 6 hours a day which cost a lot of money. There was absolutely no financial relief.
Anyone who drops in for twenty minutes would probably not mind paying a pound for such a flying visit as it would be unlikely to be either a really serious case or the next of kin visiting, as was the case with us. It used to take me a good five minutes to get to his bedside from the car park so that would only be a ten minute visit. A far better solution would have been to say that everybody pays, but only for the first hour. Close relatives dealing with a life threatening situation are already distressed and the patients need them to be there to help with chores the seriously understaffed (as we found) nursing service has no time for; as well as to provide comfort and support. They don’t need to be deterred from this task by throwing vast sums of money at the car park. And it’s certainly not the time to have to think about buying an electric car!

No one bringing a person into hospital or visiting a patient should be expected to pay any money to do so. It is an absolute disgrace that this country is getting so money grabbing, even to the point of when you are losing a member of your family and you have to think about coins in your pocket, and fines. Let’s face it, it is totally offensive.

Meantime, in populated areas, people could take advantage of hospitals to use their space for convenient parking. So what do you do? You introduce a system that registers vehicle numbers of legitimate visitors when they come into the hospital and try to stop people just parking for free. Big penalties for those that do.

But hey ho, we don’t live in a kind society here, do we really.

I think all the debate highlights the difficulties that the hospitals face in trying to provide parking for all of the many different groups that use the hospital. Different groups have correspondingly different needs and it is difficult to design a system that can be of helpful to as many people as possible without making a system that is impossible to understand for patients. I think that in view of this, the aspect that I was most happy with, was the fact that St Helier undertook a wide ranging consultation with many people to try to understand the different needs of the various groups that use the hospital. It shows that there isn’t a one size fits all approach and local hospitals need to react to local needs.

We have been fortunate in that, having reached our eighties or thereabouts, so far we have not needed to use our local hospital (The County Hospital in Dorchester, Dorset). However, recent health problems have resulted in a number of visits being required, and we have found the hospital car park almost always crammed full, with charges being made, presumably to deter local workers from using it as a cheap alternative to othet town car parks.

We feel strongly that those with health problems should not be penalised financially, whether as patients or family visitors, and while we acknowledge that the hopspital needs to maximise its income from parking charges, in fairness, a “token” scheme would be better, with bona fide hospital users (patients and visitors) being issued with tokens (perhaps with a small charge) to enter the car park. This would still prevent unauthorised users from filling the spaces, but would be seen as a better way to run affairs.

If St Helier’s parking is improved, I dread to think how it must have been beforehand. In recent experiences at the hospital I found: Very few disabled bays. Disabled bays at front entrance set out so that exiting cars block cars entering, causing bottlenecks. It is almost impossible to park, get to any department, return and exit within the 20 minute free period. There are no seats for frail passengers to sit near Drop Off points while driver parks the car. Queues build at entrance barrier to car park, sometimes extending into the main road outside. It appears entrance barriers only lift when a car exits, but having entered, there are lots of empty bays available. Queuing to enter can take 10 minutes. This makes leaving frail passenger at a drop-off point untenable. Entrance barriers and pay machines were sometimes not working. Did not see any notices about parking refunds for late appointments. (Suspect obtaining a refund would entail a further long walk around the hospital.)

St Helier may have improved it`s car parking, however there are still too few disabled parking bays.

Kent and Canterbury has very poor signs, and you are expected to read their notice boards at the enterance of the car parks, which is far too far for disabled people or the elderly to walk. Signing is bad, often written on the road , which is wearing thin. If other cars are parked over the road markings you cannot see what the markings are. The disabled spaces are free, but there are not enough of them, and you cannot park in a bay for free unless it is designated a disabled bay. You have to buy a two hour ticket as a minimum, the rates are high and always going up. Nobody ever wins any appeal, and they make comments about their ballif company they use if you do not pay after appealing, which I feel is trying to intimidate. I am refusing to pay the fine they gave me, because it was so badly signposted, will keep you posted on what happens. It is disgraceful, especially for the elderly. My mother had a dreadful time using it, and ended up with a fine as she did not buy a ticket quick enough. Dad had dementia, and she was busy worrying about him wandering off at the time. Try and avoid if possible. The parking is every bit as badly run as the care on the wards. Not a thought for the elderly at all, but then what is new in this country!

The trouble is that no one in authority takes responsibility for what they do. It is possible, as has been suggested by a tv programme whose name I forget, that some of the people who run parking management schemes have criminal records. It is good that such people can get jobs, but they should not be in positions where they have power over other people, particularly the sick and elderly.

Unfortunately it is not possible to avoid hospital car parks if you are sick, and those that run them know this. These car parks provide idea fodder of vulnerable people that can be bullied with impunity by those that delight in this sort of behaviour.

The ultimate blame must be with those in government who planned hospitals with inadequate parking space.

The idea is to force people to use public transport on the grounds of it being more environmentally friendly. This is a fallacy because although the “miles per gallon” per passenger may be less, the figure is based on a full bus, whereas busses are seldom full. The number of miles travelled to get between two points is very much more using public transport.

In addition, using public transport is much more stressful and people with infectious diseases can spread them or add to their portfolio of illnesses. This stress and infection leads to more work for the already overstretched NHS, and in the end costs more money. Several changes during a journey on public transport can also result in patients missing appointments, causing more chaos in hospitals.

John, here here for your views. The fact is, however much some lazy idiots with inappropriate powers, nothing better to do and exploitationist tendencies can make it somehow legitimate for hospitals to pay fees for people to park in the hospital, it is and always be exploitative and counter to the ethos of the NHS. I don’t know quite how this works, but some hospitals do say that they that they use the money to provide improvements. However, at the end of the day, when you are following your loved one to hospital in an ambulance and then have to fork out money to park before you go into see your loved one perhaps dying, to my mind that is detrimental to the health of the family coming to see the loved one in danger and detrimental to that patient’s health. I am not glad that the current government is squeezing costs in healthcare and councils, but I hope they get it right and keep the people who matter and get rid of the fools.

I would like to see accounts posted within the car on last years profits , and each year thereafter.
This would show that the hospital are not profiteering off the sick.