Aintree Hospital have they something to hide?

Inflatable_Armadillo

proactive wrote: »

what other methods could hospitals use to prevent commuters or people working in the locality filling up their carparks and preventing many patients/visitors parking from 8 til 5 then if not for the threat of unenforceable invoices?

What evidence do you have that commuters or people working in the locality are using this car park other than to visit/use the hospital? It would seem that most of the invoices issued in this car park are given to people whom are indeed visiting/using the hospital and have put a wheel on the white line of the bay or Blue Badge holders who park on 'double yellow' lines because of the lack of availability of designated disabled spaces, thinking indeed they are entitled to do just that.

The double standards and hypocrisy of PPC's (and therefore this hospital) are staggering! You can't use a disabled space in our car park unless you have a Blue Badge, even though we might be breaking the law in preventing you from doing so, so we issue you an invoice, but equally you can't park on our double yellow lines if you have a Blue Badge when all the disabled bays are full, so we issue you an invoice, of course the fact the double yellow lines mean nothing on private land is irrelevant to us... we are just making life easier for 'genuine' users of this car park!

Yet you accuse people of not parking properly!!!

esmerobbo

Well if you want to talk wasting NHS money I have a response to my revised question.

Here we go!!!!!!!!


Amount of money paid by Aintree NHS trust to Trethowans solicitors to
pursue unpaid car parking charges over the last two years!



2010-11 £53,093.65

2011-12 £63,479.83 to date

AlexisV

esmerobbo wrote: »

In this FOI request they dodge the question again! However they do say they have issued 369 individual claims.

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/car_parking_3#incoming-115851

I suspect that is 369 cases that have been passed onto Trethowans due to non-payment.

£53k divided by 369 gives £145 per case, which sounds typical for a letter writing campaign from a 'solicitor'.

The next question is how much was recovered as result of spending £53k. I've asked them this.

esmerobbo

AlexisV wrote: »

I suspect that is 369 cases that have been passed onto Trethowans due to non-payment.

£53k divided by 369 gives £145 per case, which sounds typical for a letter writing campaign from a 'solicitor'.

The next question is how much was recovered as result of spending £53k.

I wonder how many of them are covered by the £116,573.48 above?

If they recovered the whole 369 at the £50 claimed it would only recover £18,450!!

headpin

bromsgrovebarry wrote: »

I have some sympathy with your point but I also believe that there is a need for accountability in the public sector. This will ultimately save money that should be directed towards patient care. PFI has resulted in many hospitals being more concerned with income from peripheral 'services' rather than its core activity.

Sorry, it doesn't work like that in normal PFI contracts. It will be the SPV or their FM provider that will be setting the charges and enforcing the site parking controls. The Trust may have some influence and probably will benefit from third party income share, but it is unlikley that they will have any direct influence over the level of parking charges under a PFI contract.

Of course the same does not apply to non PFI control sites

headpin

sarahg1969 wrote: »

They wouldn't be taking the money out of the healthcare pot to pay the expenses of answering this request. It doesn't work like that. They'd simply be getting someone at a desk to compile the information during the course of their working day. And there are plenty of people at desks in the NHS (bearing in mind it's the world's fourth largest employer).

It's quite clear that they are avoiding answering.

That's a rather naive statement and assumes that everyone working for the NHS in general, and the person who is competent and capable of compiling this information specifically has spare capacity and will not be diverted from some other more important task.

Contrary to poular belief most NHS employees work more than their contracted hours without any overtime or other recognition. This additional burden just increases the stress and sickness levels menaing more work for colleagues left and/or potential additional expense in paying agency staff to cover.

HO87

proactive wrote: »

what other methods could hospitals use to prevent commuters or people working in the locality filling up their car parks and preventing many patients/visitors parking from 8 til 5 then if not for the threat of unenforceable invoices?

Researching the subject will clearly demonstrate that, generally, the problem is not and never has been the abuse of car parking by commuters. The principal issue is simply that of demand exceeding supply exacerbated by older hospitals on small sites whose designs allow all traffic to mix. Add in stressed people trying to park as soon as possible regardless of restrictions and you have a recipe for sometimes significant misuse.

At a hospital not that far distant from me they have 480 parking spaces available for public use and 112 for staff. During any one day they have 240+ staff and anticipate somewhere over 600 public spaces are needed. The maths is straightforward.

With an eye to business private parking companies (PPC) moved into the NHS sector some while ago and have sold private parking enforcement as a sensible, indeed even measured means, of regulating matters. In some cases the PPC's have won the work whilst in others the Trusts have adopted PPC methods themselves. However they have found themselves being hobbled as to the charges they levy because Trust boards are concerned that it will be seen for what it is - profiteering - if they mirror the charges of PPC's.

Couple that with what would seem to be an inability/unwillingness to buy into (or perhaps a failure to understand) the need to balance the maintenance of revenue against generating fear amongst ticket recipients that PPC's do every day and you have the financial disconnect we can see at Aintree.

The more cynical would, of course, merely state that this is what happens when you let a civil servant meddle with business - they turn what should be a very profitable business model into a loss-maker.

AlexisV

Most of the PPC invoices issued at Aintree are due to people parking in ambulance bays when they are not aware, disabled people forgetting to display badges, or in one case, where one patient parked legitimately but was then hospitalised so could not move their car.

One 'little Hitler' security guard is the cause of most of the problems at Aintree, along with poor signage and markings.

SodG24

Coupon-mad wrote: »

My local hospital uses a barrier at the exit.

You have to pay and then get a ticket that is read to allow the barrier to lift and let you out. Any unforeseen overstays, genuine ones, can be covered by a security chap manually opening the barrier (e.g. if someone took much longer than planned due to a longer appointment, flare up of condition or whatever).

And ironically, if the hospital had actually listened to advice the car park would have been three times the size and bring them even more of a healthy ( no pun intended ! ) profit to plough back into services.

Coupon-mad

headpin wrote: »

That's a rather naive statement and assumes that everyone working for the NHS in general, and the person who is competent and capable of compiling this information specifically has spare capacity and will not be diverted from some other more important task.

Contrary to poular belief most NHS employees work more than their contracted hours without any overtime or other recognition. This additional burden just increases the stress and sickness levels menaing more work for colleagues left and/or potential additional expense in paying agency staff to cover.

Oh come on! It was hardly a major task to report a cost which is certainly held in their records. When Esmerobbo revised the question they replied in a day!

Now if they are spending £60K per year pursuing people who have dared to use a disabled bay when disabled (shocking but true of Aintree Hospital trust) then it begs the questions:

- of the cases that are then paid at a late stage, out of or in Court, does the recovered money go to the Hospital trust or to UKCPS (or other PPC)?

- who is going to be the first disabled person to sue them for breach of the Equality Act, harassment etc.? A fairly big payout would result when you consider that the harassment has not just been letters/threats like in 'Ferguson-v-British Gas' it has actually meant people have been dragged to Court and forced to pay money to a PPC. And Ferguson-v-British Gas was 'only' a breach of the Protection from Harassment Act whereas the situation the Hospital are exposing themselves to is a VERY dangerous/serious 'breach of disability law' case!

- simple question, why do they not just employ a couple of people on shift work at £25K each per year instead, to man a simple inexpensive barrier? Thereby creating jobs and not threatening their poor staff and patients, and not leaving themselves open to being sued?


They are wasting public money and this FOI request was well worth doing. Who is going to copy this thread to the local paper?