"reception very friendly. Nice ..."

Thank you for your comments about Hertford County, which has certainly proved popular with the residents of east Hertfordshire. Your feedback about the friendliness of the staff and the hospital's cleanliness is something that we come across frequently.

Parking at Hertford County, however, is a problem of which we are very much aware. We face two challenging issues. The first is that the number of parking spaces that we are allowed to provide is set by the local authority under the original planning application made before the new hospital was built. Even if we had the funds to create more parking spaces and there was the land on which to put them, we aren't allowed to do so.

The second issue is that Hertford North train station is just up the road - hence all the parking restrictions on nearby roads. If we reduced our car parking charges for the public, this would merely result in commuters abusing the service and even less spaces being available to our patients.

While we do charge for parking, this is not a money-making initiative. Rather it ensures that we have sufficient funds to invest in car parking arrangements across our four hospital sites - for which we receive no dedicated funding. Annually we spend hundreds of thousands of pounds policing, maintaining and improving our public car parks. Any money left over is always ploughed back in to patient care