Car parking charges for patients at Glangwili and Prince Philip hospitals are coming to an end on 31 August and the Health Board wishes to work with both staff and patients to continue to manage safe and smooth access to the hospitals.
As a guiding principle parking will be prioritised for those patients, staff and visitors with the greatest of need.
From 1 September 2018 the Health Board will be putting in place a staged car park management system, based on validation of tickets to ensure car parking facilities are not abused by those who do not have a genuine reason to park at the hospitals.
To ensure this, we will be engaging with our staff on how best to oversee the allocation of spaces and how we can utilise Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology to include the potential for maximum stays on site.
The Health Board needs to strike a balance between ensuring effective access for patients, whilst at the same time giving sufficient space to staff to enable the smooth running of hospital services. Over the next few weeks ANPR cameras will be installed at both sites and will initially be used for monitoring and data collection purposes until a process can be agreed. The health board will retain parking attendants to manage capacity and demand during the immediate period.
Joe Teape, Director of Operations and Deputy Chief Executive at Hywel Dda University Health Board, said: “Parking has long been an issue at our hospital sites and I’d firstly like to acknowledge the frustrations that this has caused our staff, patients and visitors. We will soon be coming to the end of our existing arrangements and we want to take this opportunity to put a new and improved system in place to make it easier for people to park.
“We’re engaging with staff and the public to ensure a fairer deal for everyone, by protecting designated patient and visitor car parks and improving access for emergency vehicles. We will continue to work with the Staff Partnership Forum in relation to any potential alterations to staff parking, and further updates will be communicated soon.”
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