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stuck in traffic at the car park for over an hour

Posted By Darran123

"stuck in traffic at the car park for over an hour"

About: Royal Victoria Hospital (Belfast)

(as a service user),

I had an appointment to see my consultant in January 2024.  We left home early to give us plenty of time with traffic , traffic was bad enough but we arrived at the royal Victoria hospital in Belfast 15 mins before my appointment time. We were met with bumper to bumper traffic going into the patients car park , we where stuck in traffic at the car park for over an hour , it was one in one out , it was an awful situation as I was in a lot of pain as I had a spinal surgery and was recovering and both myself and my wife needed to use the toilet, by time we got to the clinic it was an hour and a half after my appointment time. Something badly needs done about the parking system . 

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Response from Susan Garland, PPI Support Services Manager, Logistics, BHSCT 3 months ago
We are preparing to make a change
Susan Garland
PPI Support Services Manager, Logistics,
BHSCT

Submitted on 29/01/2024 at 11:14
Published on Care Opinion at 11:24

Good Morning

My Name is Susan Garland and I am the support services manager for Car parking, Travel Planning and PPI across the Belfast Trust. Please accept my apologies for your recent car parking experience on the RVH site and how this affected you attending an appointment on time.

The Belfast Trust encourages staff to commute to work by public transport, walking, cycling, by motorbike or to car share. Despite this, the demand for car parking by staff exceeds the limited amount of car parking available on each site – particularly on the RVH site. Allocated car parking for staff reached capacity a number of years ago with many staff on a waiting list for car parking for up to 3 years. As a consequence, staff often park in the public carparks and pay the daily tariff and this impacts on spaces, especially in the main visitors carpark. This can add to the anxiety that many patients and their families may already be experiencing and leads to understandable levels of frustration.

To ensure that available staff parking provision is targeted towards those in greatest need, the Trust recently agreed to apply carpark access criteria for staff. The pandemic delayed the rollout of the new criteria but the system has now gone live on the BCH site and will roll out to the Mater and RVH sites soon. This will result in more spaces being available for patients and their families. The Trust also operates a free Park N Ride from Blacks Road to the RVH for staff to try to alleviate some of the pressures of car parking on this site. The Trust is also preparing for the Hospital Charges Bill coming into effect in May 2024. This Bill will result in tighter controls around access to visitor carparks and will alleviate the current car parking queues.

All letters sent to out clients advise that there may be extensive queues to our public car park and to allow ample time for parking. We also have drop off points to decant patients clients etc at our main doors to allow patients to be dropped off whilst a car user can park.

The above explains some of the measures we are taking to improve the current situation and again apology's for the negative experience.

Kind regards

Susan.

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