"Extortionate Car Parking Charges"

Anything else?

On Saturday 19th October, my mother in law was admitted into hospital by Ambulance with chest pain. Whilst I commend all the staff in both A&E, Admissions and Coronry Care, we feel the parking fees are extortionate and inappropriate for time spent with our relatives, due to no fault of their own. Whilst we recognise a fee for parking is required, why cant you put it back to the way it was before with the first half hour being free to collect people or prescriptions, surely this was a much fairer scheme. One and half hours for £3.50 is disgusting, you can park nearly all day in the town centre for that amount, having already paid out for petrol, this will criple most people, as many are on very low incomes and others on benefits or pensions. Having disgused the fees with our family, we have decided should we need to visit our loved ones in the future, we will be car sharing to keep the cost down. This means visiting once a day or night instead of stagerring it between relatives as people always have, giving your loved one something to look forward to or even just taking them important provisions they need. We feel the Hospital Trust is not taking the welfare of its patients into consideration or their relatives whom only want to help, so everyone is now suffering as a result of the Trusts extortionate car parking fees. Please take into consideration, if everyone does the same as us, your wards will be packed with too many visitors at one time, which puts extra strain on your staff and is unfair on other very poorly patients. We noted on our visit yesterday afternoon how empty the hospital was during peak visiting times, this again has a huge knock on effect for your cafe's and shops, which could result in extra loss of revenue, also as the car park is not being used, surely you are losing revenue across the board. If I ran my business the same as the Trust does, charging my customers outragous prices, then we would have been accused of daylight robbery and closed down by now. I very rarely complain about anything, but feel on this occasion you should know the effects this is having on us, the public, who afterall, don't want to be attending the hospital but have no choice.