Car Park Changes from 30th May

You may have recently received a text from the practice or heard on our telephone system that as of Tuesday 30th May the practice will be making some changes to our car park. We feel that this was a necessary decision, and we would like to explain what lead us to this point.

As you will no doubt be aware, the demand for general practice services is at the highest level it has ever been. As such, to try and cope with this increase, we have had to increase the number of people in our team. Whether that be additional GP’s, receptionists, or other roles; it has led to more members of staff in the building at any one time. Obviously, this has resulted in more staff needing to park at the surgery, however, it is a regular occurrence whereby staff are not able to park because of a shortage of spaces.

The main problem that has contributed to the shortage of car park space is the inappropriate use by people who aren’t attending the surgery. Some examples include commercial vehicles and large vans being left in the car park for days at a time, as well as parents from the local primary school regularly using the car park to drop off and pick up their children from school.

We have been in contact on multiple occasions with the Headteacher of the school who has kindly sent out various letters to parents, but seemingly, some parents choose to ignore these. Various members of staff have challenged parents who park at the surgery, however, on occasion, this has unfortunately resulted in abusive and/or aggressive behaviour with some staff being swore at and the phrase ‘I’ll park where I want’ being used.

This issue has caused additional challenges for the surgery whereby our pathology collection service has become at risk of being cancelled because the laboratory drivers can never find any space to park. It coincides that our collection time clashes with school finishing time, which as explained above, is when parents take up car park spaces picking their children up.

Admittedly, this type of issue isn’t unique to the school parents, and we have also had patients who have parked inappropriately in the car park, i.e., blocking the doctor’s cars or parking in the middle of the car park when there’s been no spaces available. Again, when these patients have been asked to move, they have been verbally abusive towards staff. One particular example occurred where a patient who was asked to move their car by one of the GP’s responded with ‘You should get here earlier’. This is entirely unacceptable and shows a total lack of respect for practice staff.

Not only have these kinds of problems caused problems for staff, but equally as important is that patients have also had issues. There have been multiple disputes between patients in the car park, and there have been instances where damage has been done to parked vehicles. As we can appreciate, this causes a significant amount of distress for patients when they have to pay for repairs etc.

With all this in mind, as a surgery, we have taken account of all the above problems and it is clear that the current car parking arrangements are not suitable. To that end, we have carried out a risk assessment and determined that we need to segregate parking areas.

Therefore, as of 30th May, our car park will look as below:

We feel that this is the best way forward and will ensure that staff have reserved parking as well as us still being able to provide a small amount of parking space for patients. We must stress that when using the limited amount of car park spaces, priority must be given to those who are disabled and have a blue badge, as well as parents with babies/prams.

We anticipate that the patient spaces will often be full, and as such, we would recommend where possible that patients use alternative parking in the vicinity of the practice.

We will keep the car park under a rolling review and should there be any additional problems we may have no option but to close the car park entirely.

We hope that the above provides an explanation as to why we have taken this decision, and please be advised that this is not something that the practice will be taking comments or questions on.

We thank you for your co-operation and continued support in this matter.