"Car Parking"

Dear Mrsh14320

Thank you for taking the time to share your experience with us,please be assured that your feedback is very important to us. I am extremely sorry that you encountered this problem when trying to park at Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary,and I agree with you wholeheartedly that staff members should most definitely not be parking in mother & child spaces while on duty. Staff are aware that they are not permitted to park in spaces designated for patients and visitors, however I will ensure that the Management Team are made aware of your experience and they will undoubtedly remind the staff again.

Should you wish to discuss this matter further please reach out to our Patient Experience Team at dg.dgpatientexperience@nhs.scot who will be delighted to help you.

Please let me apologise again for the inconvenience caused and to wish you a very Happy New Year when it arrives.

Kind regards

Alexis

Dear Mrsh14320

Thank you for your comments regarding your experience whilst attending Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary. I was very sorry to hear of the difficulties you experienced.

There are over 1,000 car parking spaces on the site including Blue Badge and adult and child spaces. The total number was allocated as part of the Board’s planning application and is determined by the local authority and planners. Car parking on the site is free and as such limits any form of management control measures being implemented. We are therefore unable to issue any fixed penalties for inappropriate parking.

The exception to this is the Blue Badge spaces which are protected in law by a Traffic Regulation Order (TRO). Anyone parking in these spaces without displaying a valid Blue Badge may incur a fixed penalty notice. These can only be issued locally by Police Scotland who make random visits to the site to carry out enforcement and have issued fixed penalty notices on a number of occasions.

We have no enforcement legislation available to the Board for any other designated spaces. This means that we are reliant on people behaving in a way that uses spaces as designed and unfortunately that is not always the case. Staff are reminded on a regular basis about appropriate parking across all of our sites. There are designated areas for staff to use and they are encouraged to do so. We will however continue to monitor the situation and are currently working with the regulatory bodies to investigate further control measures.

The Board has been working with car park users to maximise the utilisation of each space. This initiative has seen a marked improvement over the past six months, however we do still experience some pinch points during the day when our numbers of visitors peak and we have staff shift change over.

The Board is also exploring a number of new initiatives which we are hopeful will improve parking for patients and visitors. These include protection of walkways and access roads, vehicle number plate recognition and measures to zone the car parks closest to the hospital entrance for priority use by patients and visitors.

The Board recognises the rural nature of the area which we serve, and has implemented a number of travel measures to encourage use of public transport, cycling, walking and car sharing for those that are able to do so. This is in line with the Green Travel Plan and Scottish Government guidance.

I apologise that on this occasion your experience was negatively affected by the inappropriate parking at the hospital and wish to assure you that the Board is actively looking at measures to deliver improvements to the parking facilities.

Thank you for raising your concerns with the Board as it is important to us to understand anything which has a negative impact on your visit to the facility.

Kind regards