"Wonderful treatment - but beware of the parking..."

I have attended Quern out patients for a number of years now and always received wonderful treatment. The staff are always kind and friendly. However my last visit has resulted in me being fined £100 for failing to comply with a new parking system.

Parking has always been free - in fact I attended a day surgery appointment just a few months before this 'follow-up' visit without any problems - and I had received no notification that an external external company was now monitoring the parking and that I had to 'check in' at some sort of terminal in or around the hospital. As a result, and despite an appeal I am now faced with a £100 (yes, one hundred pounds) fine.

There was nothing to indicate that this new system was in place, and I saw no signage to tell me that on arrival or departure - why would I be looking when I wasn't aware of the change - and I saw nothing inside the hospital either. Nor was I told of the change when checking in at reception.

Not that makes any difference to the contractors who now run the car parking at the hospital, who tell me it's not a reason for a successful appeal to not know there was a new monitoring system in place; apparently it's my responsibility to have checked each and every time to make sure nothing has changed, even though I visited the same car park just a month or so beforehand. I'm certainly not going to drive back to take a look and face yet another fine. As someone on a pension this is a huge sum of money to be charged for parking for less than two hours, quite legitimately.

It's left a very bitter taste in my mouth and soured my feelings towards the hospital. In future I shall use the Great Western at Swindon - yes parking is expensive there, it at least I'll know how much it is, and won't face the word over whether a huge fine will be arriving out of the blue.