To be completely fucked off with hospital parking?

[PooDogMillionaire]

DS had a very bad crack to the head last week, I rushed him to A&E and there was nowhere to park... The only place to pull in had big red signs saying I'd be towed if I parked there, meanwhile DS is almost unconscious, pale with a bleeding head .

I've just arrived at the same hospital for my second attempt at my maternity booking in appointment only to find a 7 car long queue for the very expensive car park. Both appointments have been at 9:30 so I haven't had much time to get up here from school run and have now had to cancel both as nowhere to park.

I'm not sure what the solution is but if be scared to go into labour and not be able to find a space!

Most hospitals are in built up areas, there simply isn't room for adequate parking. What do you want them to do, magic it up out of nowhere?

tiddly I'm talking about a very large hospital with more than adequate parking. The problem is the extortionate parking charges! The hospital in question made £6.5 million in one charging period.

When I was having dd1, about ten minutes before she was born dh realised he was about to run out of time. He was just about to leave - the midwife stopped him - and told him that if there was any issue at all they would vouch that he was not in a position to do anything about his parking at that moment.

Similarly with dd2, they said as long as he wasn't blocking an ambulance bay, just park and get me in. I was on the verge of giving birth when we arrived so he dumped his car right outside the block where the delivery suite was. It was midnight but even so, the staff told him not to worry at all and they would vouch for him. Different hospital, incidentally.

So while I agree that it's an absolute pain, there are times when common sense will prevail.

I don't think anyone expects it to be magiced from nowhere but people do expect what is there to be adequately managed. One of my local hospitals has oodles of parking. A month or so ago the car park was mostly taken over by film crews filming "Holocaust". Patients, some disabled, were being told to park in nearby streets. All nearby street are controlled parking. Not a manager in sight. Completely unacceptable.

We actually have free parking at our hospital, which is amazing and you can usually get a space, albeit perhaps not exactly where you want it but it's very good.
BUT, I had to take my mother to hospital (she had seen her GP that morning who had booked her into the acute admissions ward). She wasn't well enough to walk from the car park, I couldn't stop at the door so I had to drop her off on her own and go and park. By the time I made it back, she was at reception but couldn't remember why she was there. She died 3 days later. So I have complete sympathy for those having problems.

It's terrible at most hospitals. I pay around £200 a year to park at the hospital I work at and yet, on a day shift, I usually have to park on the road. The car parking is privately managed which makes it expensive for visitors too.

Your experience sounds absolutely awful OP and I don't know what you could have done and it must have been really stressful. But they are receiving thousands of people a day - it's really hard to know what could be done.

I live in central London and our local hospitals have no parking - at all. There is just no facility at all to arrive at the hospital by car. Parking on local streets barely exists and what does exist is time-limited and costs about £6ph. That's fine for routine appointments because we have so much public transport but that doesn't work in an emergency.

In emergencies I have begged a lift off a neighbour or got a taxi. Obviously these aren't options for everyone. I'd guess this is one of the reasons people call an ambulance: it's an emergency but one you could manage yourself with your own transport - except that it's logistically impossible to manage car, child and self.

Our local hospital has a ridiculously shaped car park. I have no idea where the money goes. If it went towards nurses and midwives wages or running more clinics I wouldn't mind.

My greatest friend, now sadly dec'd, was born with brittle bone disease and with only residual legs (she was officially a 'small person') and consequently was permanently in a wheelchair, lived in an adapted bungalow and drove a specially adapted car. She had a daughter who inherited brittle bones. The girl tripped and fell, resulting in a break. Friend drove her to hospital to find that all the disabled spaces near the entrance were taken. By the limos belonging to our Lord Mayor and his entourage.

So that's it! Our Lord Mayor is officially disabled. In the head, I reckon.

I'd have blocked them in, jonquil and let them come and find me.

Sighing are you referring to Walsgrave? It wasn't the council who decided there could be no multi-storey it was the local residents who objected to it. I went a few weeks ago and they were queuing back to Clifford Bridge Road. The new improvements to the roundabout don't seem to be helping at all. My SIL pays for a parking pass from her wages but due to her working hours very often can't get a space. The disabled car park is always completely full. I took my Nan before Christmas and we queued for 45 to just get in the car park. Super Hospital

Our local hospital is right next to the train station.

The head of hospital was in the local newspaper, stating that commuters who parked in the hospital car park were inconveniencing the people who needed to use the hospital, many of whom were seriously unwell.

Follow up article in the paper from a number of commuters stating that as the council had imposed a parking charge on the train station car park, they felt entitled to park for free in the hospital car park all day. The sick would just have to lump it.

The horrendous parking fees imposed by the council which led to this situation?

A pound a day.

I used to work in an English hospital with one of the highest daily rates (and therefore profit margins for the Trust) to park in the multistorey car park. It was frequently full by 9am despite the astronomical fees.

Imagine my shock when I found that at my now local hospital in Scotland patients and visitors are allowed 4 hours free parking! This has been great for antenatal clinics/scans etc. But there is still a real problem with insufficient staff parking as I have colleagues who work there.

Tiddly in my hospitals case a multi-storey would help. So would re planning the whole thing so it's not a nightmare of u-turns to get round it in the first place.

... and it makes my blood boil when they report that people just go to A&E as if it's just a simple easy alternative to trying to get a doctor's appointment -NO - it has always made me think twice abiut the ordeal if parking, the cost etc etc whether it's an emergency or appountment ot to visit someone who is hospitalised. OP YANBU.

Sounds like a taxi or a bus would be a better option than trying to park

Another Hospital worker here. We have to pay a small fortune for our car parking. Getting a space is pretty hard. Our Trust lets patients park anywhere for the first 20 minutes for free, so they park in the staff spaces, go in and have a quick blood test or whatever, while we all drive around like idiots trying to park.

I had to park in the patient car park after going to another site for a meeting (taking meeting minutes), it cost me £15 for the day, plus I had already paid for staff parking. I'm one of the lowest paid members of staff in the Trust yet I'm still expected to pay crazy amounts of money to park. They point blank refused to give me any sort of refund or cap.

The other day our consultant was late for clinic as she couldnt get parked anywhere, they wouldnt even let her park in an essential bay. In the end I moved my car for her and has to park in town and walk back 2 miles.

Beaufort - the doctor was probably late because they were dealing with an emergency.

A lot of older hospitals have really small plots and just don't have enough space for parking/to put in a multistorey. One hospital we go to writes on appointment letters that it can take up to an hour to park!

The local hospital is out of town with limited parking (think near major roads that you can't stop on) but they suggest you take the bus. Which is fine if you're happy to park in town at some ludicrous rate and take 45mins to get to the hospital but the bus service has been massively cut back. You can't win. It's easier to drive 30 miles and use the other hospital with ample free quiet parking. If you do get a space the parking charges are extortionate.

Our super hospital has a multi story which is purely for staff then about 6 smaller car parks, always so rammed you have people creating their own spaces in it just dumping cars. It's ridiculous as the system will let you in even when it's full but the walk in centre the barrier won't lift if full much better.

What pisses me off at the hospital I attend is all the non-blue badge holders who fill the disabled car park because it's near the door and it's free, leaving the blue badge holders nowhere to park. Last time I went it took DH almost an hour of waiting before a space came free.

There's absolutely no excuse for it. The hospital is served by a free park and ride, and a tram, but they both drop off too far away for most blue badge holders to walk to the mai entrance and the hospital is huge so people can have a long walk once inside, too.

I used to have to pay 1% off my salary or parking, despite the fact that more often than not I couldn't get parked. The only shift you could ever park onsite or was early. If you were on a late starting at 1.30-2pm don't even bother coming into the multi storey, if on a night shift was even worse as lots of visitors, so you'd have to drive up and down streets not very well lit looking for unrestricted parking as the hospital is near the town centre lots of the streets are residents only or restricted to 30 mins/1hour.
Buses run regularly from most areas for appointments but not for shifts, buses finish before late shift ends and don't start running until after early shift starts.

I had to go for x-ray the other week and luckily it wasn't urgent but I was leaving work and returning to work so drove, the parking charges weren't an issue but couldn't get anywhere near the car park. Turned around and called my work related health insurance, but most people don't have that option.

spent loads of time at the hospital while my mum was very poorly, even staying at night.....the evening she died we obviously were all upset ( 4 cars in total in car park) and the parking attendant let us all out without having to pay...i had been there over 24 hours, so i would have been expensive....really appreciated that guy that night

our local hospital has a multistory with a helipad on top :)

It's absolutely disgusting IMO. At my nearest A&E that kids can go to, there is no parking whatsoever. What sort of idiot organised that?