NHS bosses have admitted Tunbridge Wells Hospital was built without enough parking spaces

The trust which runs Tunbridge Wells Hospital has plans to ease its parking crisis after admitting it was built with inadequate spaces.

It revealed to Kent Live on Wednesday (Nov 28) it was working with Tunbridge Wells Borough Council on a solution for the 512-bed hospital where around 2,000 staff are based.

Exasperated drivers battle to find parking spaces at the £230million hospital - a "nightmare" predicted long before construction.

And those who fail to find a space among the 447 visitor bays face parking tickets for squeezing in elsewhere including on walkways and even a zebra crossing.

The hospital serves a 500,000 largely rural population and is run by Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust.

People have shared their terrible experiences with Kent Live and highlighted the risk of missed appointments and the unacceptable stress it is causing patients, friends and family who are already sick, worried or upset.

In January, Nina Dunton, 46, from Hildenborough got a ticket after spending 30 minutes trying to find a space so her vulnerable father, 85, who has a form dementia, could attend an appointment.

His Blue Badge was useless as even the disabled bays were full in the car parks she described as "absolute chaos".

The problem is so severe the hospital's Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) website has a permanent notice laying the blame at the council for "rejecting" applications to increase parking.

Two years before the "state-of-the-art" hospital opened, the trust admitted 1,200 spaces were "probably" not enough. Sixty-five visitor bays have since been added making 447 spaces for visitors and 818 for staff, a total of 1,265.

The trust said in 2009 it had allocated the minimum number of spaces in line with the government's green transport policy.

But red flags about parking were raised countless times from 2006.

The most vocal objector was the late John Goodfellow of the former Patient and Public Involvement Forum who doggedly warned hospital bosses there were not enough visitor spaces.

He urged them to consider the "fragility of hospital patients and many of their carers and visitors".

Resident Stuart Lyell tried to drop off his wife for her 2.40pm appointment on November 15.

"We arrived 20 minutes before the appointment. However, it soon became very clear that there were no car parking spaces available, with significant numbers of cars queuing at each car park entrance and other cars circulating in each car park looking for a space. Therefore, I dropped my wife off and went in search of a car space.

"I eventually found a space some 40 minutes later after arriving, but that was only because I was very fortunate to have seen someone walk to their car in the area I was circulating and got to that space before one of the other four or five circulating cars got there first.

"After my wife’s appointment I registered a strong complaint with the PALS office, and was not surprised to learn that many people have already made similar complaints."

Mr Lyell, 60, who was in commercial property development for nearly 40 years, said: "My sole ambition here is to see the problem resolved and I would be very willing to help in doing that."

More spaces required

A Tunbridge Wells Borough Council spokesman said: "We have been talking to the hospital about the difficulties with parking and have identified a possible way to create additional visitor spaces. We expect to receive a planning application in due course."

A trust spokesman added: "At peak times during the week, we’re aware that visitors to Tunbridge Wells Hospital can experience difficulty finding a parking space. Car parking spaces for the hospital were allocated through the local council planning process.

"We continue to work with the council to look at ways to add more parking spaces to the hospital.

"We encourage staff and our visitors to use public transport or car share to visit the hospital, where it is possible to do so."