Victory over hospital parking row

Jul 19 2007 By Alison Dayani, Birmingham Mail

PROTESTERS were today celebrating after winning a battle to ease a car parking crisis at a Birmingham hospital.

Birmingham City Council has finally bowed to pressure and created extra parking spaces at the front of Northfield's Royal Orthopaedic Hospital.

Nearly 40 spaces have been added on verges outside the Bristol Road South hospital, allowing patients and visitor to park there between 9am and 4.30pm.

Friends of the hospital have fought for years over elderly patients forced to find a space up to half a mile away or park dangerously on the central reservation of the busy road when the car park is full.

Homeowners in Nigel Avenue, Hole Lane and Maryland Drive, have also complained over motorists clogging up roads around the hospital.

John Sims, who has campaigned tirelessly for more spaces and is now a member of the elected council of the Foundation hospital, said: "The extra 36 spaces is making a difference and wonderful after all these years of badgering the council.

"More spaces would be good and we are raising with the council the possibility of increasing the number further down the road."

Problems surfaced because the hospital, which specialises in bone illnesses and hip replacements, has tripled its number of patients over the past ten years to around 60,000 a year.

Penny Venables, hospital chief executive, said: "The spaces have been added over the last few weeks and we are very grateful.

"We are constantly looking at parking around the site and are planning to do more and even looking at redesigning car parking at the hospital in the coming year."

In recent years, passers-by have been appalled at sights including an elderly man pushing his wife down the road to the hospital with a zimmer frame hanging around his neck. A woman was also seen struggling to get her disabled teenage son and mother with two sticks from the central reservation outside the hospital.