"Acceptable Treatment but car parks are a nightmare"

Having an outpatients appointment at Colchester General hospital, at 1615 on 19th November 2019. I parked my vehicle in car park 1 at the hospital.

My appointment was 30 minutes late, following my consultation I returned to my car via the ticket machine where I paid the fee requested by the machine. I then returned to leave the car park and return home.

I was then held captive in the car park along with numerous others until approximately 1900, no one from the NHS Trust or CPP attempted to assist any of us stranded in the car park - very poor customer service. There was an accident in the car park and a number of arguments among the captive drivers. I was extremely nervous about going back to the payment machine, however, as we were being held captive by the NHS Trust and their partners CPP, I was confident that I would not get a fine for overstaying given that the circumstances were beyond my control.

How wrong could I be, I received a fine letter and when I appealed to CPP it was rejected. If this had been an international telephone call then I would have thought that I was being scammed!

I did not intend to overstay at the car park this was entirely the fault of the NHS trust and their partners who would not let me out. I now have to appeal to a third party to consider my situation.