Kinked George - its turning nasty!

I have continued to pursue the issue of parking around the periphery of King George Hospital since the BHR Trust to charge for parking and limit employee availability. After our initial very successful protest Barbara New from the PAtient Advice Liaison Service seemed quite conducive and has been writing and emailing personal responses. I had made a request that a public meeting be held so that local residents could express their concerns directly to the Trust, however the response received today was rather disappointing, much like the attendance at our last protest. It seems we have lost the impetus. I will arrange one last protest, however I should add in my discussions Mrs New has alluded to the fact that the Hospital had submitted a planning application to increase the existing parking provision. The multi-story extension was refused by our planning department. Barbara New is going to see if she can trace some paperwork so that I can ask our local Councillors to push for a more favourable response to any future applications. If an agreement can be set pre-application, this might encourage the Hospital to try again....as you can see I am running out of ideas now and this may require a public meeting with the highways team to find alternative solutions if the Councillors do not agree to this.

Regarding the public meeting Barbara stated:

"Further to our recent e mail correspondence, I have now received a response which advises that there is no plan to chair an open meeting with regard to this issue."

I had then challenged for a return to the previous parking scheme due to the fact that 9 Security Officers had stolen over £500,000 from the Parking bay machines over 5 years (another example of trust mis-management), the resulting capture would result in return of the proceeds of crime due to new legislation and the Security Contractors own Fidelity and Efficacy insurances. The resulting income from the old ticket machines should also support the need for revenue from parking without need for introduction of the recent perturbing scheme. Her response was:

"I can confirm that we will not revert to the original parking system. This new system is more efficient for the hospital to ensure that those members of staff who need to get to the hospital for the benefit of patients are able to. The system has been applied at both our hospitals using the same criteria. I will make enquiries as to whether there has been an application to the Council to extend the car park and if so when this was made and whether this was declined by Redbridge Council. Upon receipt of this information advise you accordingly"