Information about parking for volunteers

Changes have been made to parking arrangements for third-party organisations. We understand our patients and visitors may have queries so we hope the following points clarify our positon. 

• We fought very hard and successfully to be able to build our new emergency assessment unit to allow us to better care for our very ill patients coming in from A&E. That’s great news for our patients and should make a big difference to our emergency department – but it means we’re going to lose 70 parking spaces outside the main entrance. This prompted a review of our parking arrangements that showed we weren’t being consistent, especially when it came to third party organisations. We’ve made changes to ensure that arrangements are consistent and more equitable across our hospital.
• We have ensured that individuals employed by charity organisations to work on our site have the same access to concessionary permits as our own staff. We’ve also given an assurance that volunteers who hold a Blue Badge can park in non-barrier staff parking areas at no cost.
• We don’t believe volunteers should be out of pocket as a result of the invaluable wok they do here – that’s why we reimburse our volunteers for costs they incur up to a daily limit of £5. We urge other organisations to do the same for their volunteers.  
• We’re disappointed to hear that the management of the Friends of NGH charity is considering withdrawing their service in response to the changes in parking arrangements. Our visitors can be assured that the patient buggy service will continue even if the Friends chose not to provide it.
• If parking costs are a barrier to volunteering for any individuals, we would urge those volunteers to come and talk to us about joining our in-house team of volunteers where they will have costs reimbursed as well as access to our full range of volunteer training and development opportunities.