Hospital trust's disabled parking plans delayed (From Watford Observer)

A consultation. Is this for real?

The £4 charge needs adjustment for it makes everyone sick - carers and the ill. £4 may not be much to those high incomes but it is a very charge for the majority who are on average earnings and low pensions.

Mohandas wrote:
A consultation. Is this for real?

The £4 charge needs adjustment for it makes everyone sick - carers and the ill. £4 may not be much to those high incomes but it is a very charge for the majority who are on average earnings and low pensions.

Why do they need a consultation? Its not as if anyone is going to think paying £4 to park is fair, or that disabled people should have to pay to park at the hospital, when they dont have to pay to park anywhere else.

What planet are these people on?

Knowing the way the NHS works a consultation would cost a small fortune, and the end result would be what we already know, that to pay £4 to park at the hospital is a rip-off.

blue badge free

This stinks to high heaven

NHS.

National Health Service.

Where on earth did they get the idea that ripping off motorists while parking at hospitals was a good way to improve the nations health?

Idiots!

They work for us, remember. If the people who thought this was a good idea worked for me, they wouldn't be working for me for long!

Gaffney should go and someone with inherent common sense should replace her. It doesn't need a survey to know that overcharging people for parking at hospitals is a BAD idea.

Is she a bit thick?

The car park should be run in house and not by a contractor, who is taking a big slice of the money. Using private companies is not always cheaper and rarely gives better service. At the moment the company even charge you extra to pay by internet.
It's not as if the car park is even in a good state.

JMS1234 wrote:
The car park should be run in house and not by a contractor, who is taking a big slice of the money. Using private companies is not always cheaper and rarely gives better service. At the moment the company even charge you extra to pay by internet.
It's not as if the car park is even in a good state.

That would certainly stop the NHS from hiding behind confidentiality and business secrecy reasons and also stop them from saying nothing can be done because some equally stupid pillock signed up to a long contract with the parking firm.

Yes, let's bring it back in-house and then if we don't like what they do, we can sack the NHS board and select managers until we get a decent parking system at the hospital.

Nothing's impossible until you get the NHS involved with private parking firms.

I just object to paying a lot of taxes for the inefficient NHS to then get ripped off over parking.

I believe it's called adding insult to injury.

Love the sing on the Photo "Your Hospital Your NHS"! Then it should say
"Your Car Parks YOU pay for TWICE"! Which one of these Numpties thought contracting it out was a good idea? Bleeding pen pushers on exorbitant wages that's who

The Rover wrote:

Mohandas wrote: A consultation. Is this for real? The £4 charge needs adjustment for it makes everyone sick - carers and the ill. £4 may not be much to those high incomes but it is a very charge for the majority who are on average earnings and low pensions.

Why do they need a consultation? Its not as if anyone is going to think paying £4 to park is fair, or that disabled people should have to pay to park at the hospital, when they dont have to pay to park anywhere else. What planet are these people on? Knowing the way the NHS works a consultation would cost a small fortune, and the end result would be what we already know, that to pay £4 to park at the hospital is a rip-off.

Whilst I would agree that the charge is too much (and why not have a smaller one, say £1 for an hour) I do actually question why blue badge holders are exempt from parking charges?

All the reasons given in previous discussions for an exemption could be applied equally to many non blue badge holders

I agree with Garston Tony - why Are blue badge holders exempt from parking charges? The Blue badge provides essential access to parking facilities closer to the intended destination than they might otherwise find - but why should this parking be free if other people are charged for it?

I am not saying I like parking charges, or that they haven't put me off of visiting some places - but people who are severely disabled, but don't quite qualify for a blue badge (which is very hard to obtain if you have, for example, an unpredictable condition like ME that doesn't permanently disable you, but when it strikes completely incompacitates you) have to pay full price and struggle from often far distant parking spaces.

What is unfair is to impose the changes with so little notice. Ok, so they don't have to provide an inter-site bus for free, and ok it costs a stupid amount to do so that I would rather be spent on filling the potholes, and providing safer, more visible pedestrian crossings, installing new machines that only charge you for the time you stay, not a set minimum period, hiring more empty land from the council so that there are sufficient places to park when you visit the hospital, etc, etc - but the buses should not have been removed so quickly without giving people a chance to save and find an alternative way of getting to the hospitals.

Yes, the survey is more tilted than the leaning tower of pisa - but it does make you think, doesn't it? Just where does the money come from for the quite frankly pretty good level of security there when you park your car - where else can you park that has a visible parking person checking cars, reporting people that dump untaxed cars in the hospital car park instead of disposing of them properly, directing people to the right bit of the hospital when you are new and don't know the layout, stopping cars parking in the access roads simply because they want to wait for a closer space instead of parking a few yeards further down the hill?

If you read the survey, it looks like the staff Do pay for their own parking, so it's not like the hospital are charging patients to subsidise staff access to work.

Until this hospital campus stuff happens, the Hospital doesn't own that much land around it. If they made parking free, then they wouldn't have money to pay for alternative parking land for staff, and there would be nowhere left for patients & visitors to park at all.

We are very lucky to live far enough from London that parking is available at all. Try visiting Great Ormond Street and see how much it costs you to get there.