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Abysmal attitude towards car parks

Story from nhs.uk

"Abysmal attitude towards car parks"

About: The Royal Victoria Infirmary

I took my partner to the RVI today (20/06/2016) to visit her new grandson, after driving around for about 15 minutes I eventually found a disabled space to park in. On my way into the main car park I was first confronted by a stupidly parked car on double yellow lines and I very nearly hit another car while turning the corner, I then followed the arrows and was again confronted by yet another car facing the wrong way and in the middle of the road, I asked the driver to move so I could get past and was ignored, his reply to me pointing out he was facing the wrong way was to say" Well this is the way I came in " and he just closed the window on me, so to get past I had to drive within 6 inches of the legally parked cars and bounce over a kerb. I did go into reception to complain, I even showed the person behind the desk a dash cam video of what I had encountered and was told that someone would be out to deal with the problem. I then went back to my car to wait for my partner and during the 90 minutes I was there not one person came into the main car park. At one point there was very nearly a punch up between two ladies over a parking place. I know there are cctv cameras but these do not cover 100% of the car parks. I suppose the security staff will have some sort of excuse for not actually walking about.

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Responses

Response from The Royal Victoria Infirmary 7 years ago
The Royal Victoria Infirmary

Submitted on 29/07/2016 at 09:58
Published on nhs.uk on 30/07/2016 at 02:31

Thank you for your feedback regarding the main car park at the RVI and we are sorry you initially had difficulty finding a disabled parking space. Unfortunately at busy times parking spaces are difficult to find for everyone and in the event that no disabled bays are available drivers should use the pay and display bays.

Trust Security staff patrol all the car parks routinely at Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI) and issue fixed penalty notices to vehicles that are illegally parked. The car parks are signed to define traffic flow directions and it is the responsibility of the driver when visiting and parking in the RVI car parks to drive in the correct direction and park their cars responsibly within the curtilage of the car parking bay. There are occasions when members of the public who are car drivers behave in a manner that contravene Trust car parking rules and when this situation occurs the Trust endeavours that security staff deal with offenders in line with Trust Policy, and we would like to apologise that you were not assisted with the challenging situation you encountered with another driver in the car park..

We are unsure why nobody came to your assistance within a 90 minute period from the information provided in your feedback. However, there are occasions on Trust premises that security staff get called to address both patient and public safety matters as they are not exclusively available to patrol the car parks, and this may have been one such occasion. If you would like us to look in to this matter further please contact the Patient Relations Department on 0191 233 6161 or email patient.relations@nuth.nhs.uk with further information on your concerns and they will be happy to investigate the matter on your behalf.

I am also keen to provide assurance that the Trust recognises the importance of making on-site parking as easy and accessible as possible, and to this end has invested heavily in a new car parking infrastructure system with enforcement cameras and number plate recognition systems.

The car parking infrastructure and enforcement systems shall be progressively commissioned over the coming months and shall be fully operational before the end of this year. The Trust also has close circuit television (CCTV) of car parks which are monitored by security staff.

The Trust complies with the Equality Act 2010 for needs of disabled drivers and the ratio of disabled car parking spaces provided within the RVI car park is compliant with these regulations.

Thank you again for your feedback.

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