Fury over parking fee plan for hospital staff
Tuesday 24th August 2010, 11:30AM BST.
Residents living near a Black Country hospital have hit out at plans to charge staff to use a £6million multi-storey car park.
They say the move will herald years of parking misery outside their homes. The car park at Russells Hall Hospital was hailed as the cure for the problem by bosses.
But homeowners criticised the decision to charge nurses and doctors to leave their cars at the multi-storey, saying staff would shun it in favour of free places in nearby streets.
Councillors are calling for parking permits to be introduced on roads around the hospital to stop them getting clogged up.
But they admit many people may be unwilling to pay to park in their own street.
Furious residents are currently struggling to find places to park outside their homes.
The main problem areas are Milton Street, Tennyson Street, Byron Street, Elgar Crescent and Albert Street.
Barbara Cooper, aged 73, of Albert Street, said some cars parked outside her house for eight hours a day.
She said: “It’s a very big problem – it’s absolute chaos here some days.
“Everyone along this road hasn’t got a drive to park on, so by the time they get home from work all the spaces have gone.
“There are parents with babies who can’t even get anywhere near their homes — it’s terrible for them when it’s cold and raining.”
Councillor Judy Foster, who represents Brockmoor and Pensnett ward, said she would call for permits to be introduced at the North Dudley Area Committee meeting in October.
She said: “The issue of cost hasn’t come up then — it would depend how much residents would be expected to pay for a permit.
“We need to look at these possible solutions, though.”
Mrs Cooper, a retired job centre worker, said residents were so desperate they would be willing to pay for a permit.
She added: “It’s not fair for staff to have to pay to park at work so that is surely going to make the problem on our road worse.”
New fees, including an all-day £5 charge, have been introduced for visitors at the main car park. People parking for more than three hours face a rise of more than 40 per cent.
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i live very near the hospital and we have got new gas pipes being put down at present so we have problems getting on our drives, we cant park on the pavement by our house because we will get a parking ticket,the wardens walk up throughout the day, lol!!! there are double yellows on our side of the road and we could not park on the other side of the road because there is no space due to hospital staff leaving there cars there all day!!! there were police no parking cones all down the road last week but they all disappered!! it is a nightmare
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The residents are right.
Why should the staff (including my wife) be required to pay to go to work? On low wages most will indeed park in local streets.
So they bring in a residents permit , hurrah! Then charge the residents for the permits. Talk about punishing the innocent , totally unfair.
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Staff have the right to go to and from this hospital without fear to work. Residents have the right to be able to access their houses without problem.
Fat cat managers give up your free parking spaces, and let nurses, porters, doctors, domestics, physios, radiographers, kitchen staff and other essential staff park nearest the hospital for free or for a very nominal charge.
Unlike managers who can go home at 5pm, these staff are likely to be coming out of work and going into work in the wee hours.
Their security is paramount and the NHS trust has a duty of care to them to make sure they are not at risk.
Here is an opportunity for the trust to show staff how valued they are, instead they try and extort money from them.
NHS staff are already facing a pay cut this coming year, what makes you think they should subsidise you as well.
Unison and the RCN are very quiet on this matter- how are you earning your subscriptions here?It won’t be long before your contributions are seen as a luxury if you don’t do more for your members!
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Hey, leave us NHS managers alone.
We work just as hard as other NHS staff. If we weren’t around then the hospitals would soon get bankrupt due to no controls over the money, the facilities wouldn’t be in place for the doctors and nurses to do their vital work.
Get a grip and stop bad mouthing hard working people.
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You conveniently miss the point- no one said you weren’t a hard working person, but crucially you are highly unlikely to be around at the times of day when vital NHS staff are vulnerable.
I daresay you can afford to pay £5 a day for parking, but more probably you get a free parking space as one of your perks!
I have had 24 years working in the NHS, held a budget as a junior sister.A manager came in and did that job and got £15k a year more and was less effective at it!
I have at times had evening plans chaged at a minutes notice so that staffing levels are safe only to be told to take the time back at a time convenient to the department.
Ask yourself if you are really as essential as you think you are, because to me, you sound like you have an over inflated opinion of yourself.
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I know my role in the organisation and I know I’m no more important than any other member of staff here. I’m just sick of people being jealous of NHS managers who are just doing their job and rarely get the perks believed of them.
We too work long hours at times and are often more at risk when restructures are held.
I certainly don’t have an over inflated opinion of myself, but then I again, I don’t pretend to be an angel as nurses so often do!
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Simple answer to this, you put the top bosses at the hospital on the same rates of pay as the workers, then see if they think its fair to be robbed of even more money when they are in effect being forced to pay even more tax just to go to work like these workers are.
An alternative is to get rid of the Quango’s known as the NHS Patient Care Trusts, and to then use the money saved to give the workers a rise and free parking at Russells Hall Hospital, what cant be allowed to happen is for the residents and the workers at the hospital, to be used as an excuse to raise even more tax to pay for the snouts in the trough, greedy feather bedded elite, to have inflation proof lifestyles.
Jim of Bearwood.
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How much money actually goes to the NHS and how much do the parking inforcement companys get?
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Firstly why should we the residents have to pay for a permit to park outside OUR own houses, to me it is utterly ridiculous.
It is a nightmare to come down my road there, as sometimes there are 3 cars at my household and we can only fit the 2 on the drive I find that my boyfriend can never park outside my house as staff can be parked outside my house from 8 in the morning to 8 at night, and we have a white line outside our drive to stop them blocking it, but that still doesn’t stop them.
I agree the staff shouldn’t have to pay to park on the multistory, but other places have to pay for their car parks so why not a discounted price if need be, but if they have to pay of course they’re gonna stick with the easy option of “let’s just dump it outside some ones house” and yes people do just dump their cars on my road, whether it be double parking (and not even on the pavement) so even 1 car stuggles to get down.
It’s the attitude where they find it ok to just dump cars on the corners of roads, or double park don’t they think of the residents aswell as it’s annoying for them as some residents have their drives blocked.
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I agree with you Charlee as to why staff should not have to pay to park at work and why residents shouldn’t have to pay for permits.
I suggest you direct your written queries to the NHS manager at this hospital.
Mr Lloyd Barker, nurses have long sought to distance themselves from the ‘angel’ label as it implies that they will put up with anything in their workplace, plus as nursing is seen as a vocation, there is huge scope for managers to use emotional blackmail to manipulate nurses into anything from working overtime, to swapping shifts, accepting substandard working conditions or not being paid properly.
As you will note, I did not highlight nurses as the only group who would suffer from this poor management decision, but also mentioned other low paid members of staff.
I will now let you into a secret. I am an NHS manager. Not in your area, but I did work in the West Midlands and Worcestershire for eighteen years.
My day now is very different,my life is one big appointment calendar. I trust yours is similar. I can honestly say that when I started my new position I felt guilt at getting so well paid when my colleagues were working so much harder in much more pressing conditions than I was.
I would suggest that you step out of your comfort zone and spend a few shifts working within different departments of your trust, but I would definately go to a and e and see what staff put up with there.
Ask them how they end up working 12 hours because someone rang in sick and they are not allowed to have agency staff to cover, ask about what equipment is faulty and how they make do and manage.
Ask about what would make their job easier and make them valued and one of the things I can tell you is that getting too and from work safely, particularly at night or in the early hours when some shifts finish would be high on that list.
I have, myself driven around looking for a parking space for half an hour before ‘dumping’ my car somewhere, hoping it won’t be vandalised by locals, towed or ticketed.
I apologise for this, but the alternative is a verbal warning from uncaring managers who usually have their own carparking space!!!
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If I wrote a letter to the NHS manager are they gonna stop people from parking in the street?
I understand you don’t wanna get in trouble with managers, but at the same time they are angering residents, and not just residents it stops bus drivers from getting down the road, and they can’t even pull up to bus stops as people believe it’s alright to park where the bus needs to pull up.
And when people park in ridculous places such as junctions and corners they should expect to be ticketed when they are causing hazards,there are some cars who have been given mulitple tickets and if you say they are on low wages how has this not stopped them? As I know someone who has also stopped bin men from doing there job as they couldn’t get up the road.
What’s it going to come to coning the road? So we have can access to the pavement outside our houses, cause it’s not just me who need that space to park but residents who live in flats aswell. But then again they don’t take notice of the cones whether it be they move them or they even run them over!
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