Yeovil District Hospital NHS Trust gets into bed with Parking Eye

SirSnortsalot

Wonderful news for patients I'm sure.

"Further to previous communications sent out today, a company called ParkingEye will begin taking over the enforcement of staff and visitor parking at Yeovil District Hospital from Monday 8th December 2014. Starting with the new Visitor Car Park and with a phased rollout across the site during December, ParkingEye will remove all parking barriers and enforce parking regulations by means of Parking Charge Notices (PCNs), linked to Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology. Vehicles infringing parking regulations will receive a £70 PCN from ParkingEye, which will be reduced to £40 if paid within 14 days."

Umkomaas

Utter despair, especially after the guidelines issued by the Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt (I wonder how long he was parked when he took his kids to A&E, instead of his GP), to NHS Trusts in the context of predatory private parking companies - and do they get any more predatory than the Trust's new bedfellows?

Some reference to the Buxton Hospital Trust must surely ring serious alarm bells for Yeovil. But, no worries, index-linked pensions not affected, we'll back our PPC - and sod our patients and their families.

Now the sick, the worried, the shaken, the desparate, the vulnerable and the bereaved are in for far more 'treatment' from PE than the NHS could ever hope to dispense!

Sickening!

Half_way

A full FOI set of requests may be of use, and if they have any community meetings etc then attending them with all the evidence of what parking eye are upto at other NHS sites such as Burton in Derbyshire ( the plain language commission report will be of use in that aspect)

Fergie76

No surprise really, but that statement is all about enforcement, when in actual fact it should be about management, but we all not there are very few parking companies that actually 'manage' the car parks.

4consumerrights

It really gets my goat that there are parking companies in hospitals - targeting the sick and vulnerable together with the staff and visitors looking after and visiting patients.

The public pay for hospitals via taxes they don't need to be penalised by the predatory mis management of car parks by the likes of Parking Eyepsy

HO87

Anyone who knows YDH will know that you actually get two hospitals for the price of one - on site. There is YDH and immediately next door is the Maternity Hospital and they share a car park which can accommodate, at a guess, a maxiumum of 120-140 cars. In addition there is some roadside car park at the rear of the car park but that too is very limited. There wasn't enough parking space there 20 years ago and it hasn't changed now that the hospital provides the only 24-hour A&E cover in the county outside Taunton and serves a huge rural area in Somerset, western Wilts and Dorset.

For many years people attending appointments or visiting patients were effectively obliged to park in the side streets but that has now been greatly reduced as the result of resident only parking imposed by South Somerset DC. Now queues are a common sight whilst people wait for spaces to become available - and no doubt PE will be looking to exploit the situation because, inevitably, the queue sits inside the car park and will be beyond the ANPR cameras.

Anyone visiting the hospital should consider using one of the SSDC car parks south of the Reckleford (A30) dual carriageway and use the underpasses peopled by heavy drinkers and other ne'er-do-wells or, if they needed to go shopping too, park in Tesco's off Queensway. Currently Tesco's are not infected but it was once the haunt of Highview and ANPR cameras remain in place.

Coupon-mad

This is terrible news and whoever signed the contract doesn't deserve their salary - jeez don't they know how to Google & check out a firm, check out what has happened at other hospitals with this pariah on site, harassing vulnerable people?

HO87

This what the spokesman had to say for himself:

http://www.westerngazette.co.uk/Yeovil-District-Hospital-revamp-pay-exit-parking/story-22859335-detail/story.html

Parking wasn't particularly cheap but the pay-on-exit barrier system was fair. We know that PE are going to be far from fair and their take is going to be significant.

The_Slithy_Tove

What is not mentioned anywhere is exactly what kind of scheme is to be put in place. If it's on the model of Park With Ease, where you enter your VRN on leaving, and it tells you how long you've stayed and how much you owe, then that is reasonably fair. If it's the Burton model, where the driver has to guess how long they've been there (despite the technology being perfectly capable of telling you), then that is an inherently unfair system deliberately arranged to catch people out, and the Trust should be duly pilloried.

Anyone know which it is? Maybe an FoI request asking for all documentation/emails/meeting minutes relating to the decision making process around the changes in parking management?

Umkomaas

If it's on the model of Park With Ease, where you enter your VRN on leaving, and it tells you how long you've stayed and how much you owe, then that is reasonably fair.

I can't see PE being interested in providing any system that is 'reasonably fair' because there's little likelihood of them profiting from it.

spikyone

So, what they're doing is taking out barriers, which are virtually 100% effective at preventing your common-or-garden overstays and failure to pay. They're replacing it with Parking Eye's ANPR system, which is roughly 0% effective at preventing anything, because it's only a camera.


On that basis, I'm off to write a letter to Yeovil NHS trust. I have some magic beans they'll definitely want to buy...