"all the new car parks at afternoon visiting full....."

Thank you for your comments, we apologise for the delays you have experienced in getting on to the car park. I have spoken to the Car Parks Manager here who has explained that there has been significant demand for parking, particularly around that time when people arriving for visiting are arriving at similar times due to set visiting hours on wards. Later visiting is not as much of a problem as there are far fewer people on site for out patient appointments compared to mid afternoon. The Trust has recently increased capacity for parking, doubling the amount of spaces available to almost 1000 with the opening of the Central Car Park (accessed from Eccles Old Road and the North Car Park (accessed via the A&E entrance to the site on Stott Lane). These can reach capacity at busy times; however, the option still remains to use the East Car Park (on Stott Lane facing the rehab entrance) which usually has spaces throughout the day and is close to most hospital areas. I would note that the East Car Park is run by Salford City Council and whilst employing almost identical parking tarrifs, they do work on a pay-and-display basis, unlike our own car parks which are pay-on-exit. Salford City Council do employ traffic wardens who regularly patrol the East Car Park so it is important to make the correct payment. Regarding the multi-story car park (MSCP), you are correct that this is a staff car park; however, it is for the majority of the day at capacity with many staff parking in off-site sattelite car park spaces rented from other organisations, such as the Metrolink park-and-ride at Ladywell. The MSCP will be used in emergencies to provide relief parking if there are any vacant spaces. As I have mentioned, this period of demand is particular to this mid afternoon visiting when most visitors arrive simultaneously. There is a move however within the NHS at large away from fixed times towards open visiting. A number of our wards do offer open visiting times and it is anticipated that this will become the norm in hospitals. This will likely spread the numbers of visitors through the course of a day and hopefully smooth out these spikes in demand which cause the problems you have experienced. Thank you again for taking the time to feed back your experiences with us and I hope this information is useful to you. If you would like to discuss further, please contact our PALS team (PALS@srft.nhs.uk)