"Visiting my elderly Dad"

Hi,

my name is Susan Garland and I am a Support Services Manager for Logistics which includes Portering and Car Parking.

Firstly thank you for taking the time to send us your valuable feedback. Belfast Health and social care encourages our clients to feedback on what is good and bad n our organisation to enable us to make changes where necessary.

I have shared your news story with the Portering manager and he has passed on your comments and shared with the whole team. They were pleased to receive recognition for the conduct of one of their team.

Please accept my sincere apologies for your recent carparking experience on the RVH site. The Belfast Trust encourages staff to commute to work by public transport, walking, cycling, by motorbike or to car share. Despite this, the demand for carparking by staff exceeds the limited amount of carparking available on each site – particularly on the RVH site. Allocated carparking for staff reached capacity a number of years ago with many staff on a waiting list for carparking for up to 3 years. As a consequence, staff often park in the public carparks and pay the daily tariff and this impacts on spaces, especially in the main visitors carpark. This can add to the anxiety that many patients and their families may already be experiencing and leads to understandable levels of frustration. To ensure that available staff parking provision is targeted towards those in greatest need, the Trust recently agreed to apply carpark access criteria for staff. The pandemic delayed the rollout of the new criteria but the system has now gone live on the BCH site and will roll out to the Mater and RVH sites soon. This will result in more spaces being available for patients and their families.

The Trust also operate a free Park N Ride from Blacks Road to the RVH for staff and patients to try and alleviate some of the pressures of carparking on this site. Information on the times can be found on the Belfast Trust website.

I hope the above explains some of the measures being taken to improve parking for patients and their families. Please feel free to contact me if you have any further issues relating to carparking and my apologies again for your recent experience.

Kind regards

Susan.

Hello Jenny417

My name is Kevin Patterson I am the Patient and Client Experience Facilitator for the Belfast Trust and I am the manager for the Main Reception in the RVH site. Can I say thank you so much for putting your story on Care Opinion, I am so sorry to hear you had to wait such a long time to park and we know that this is an ongoing struggle for visitors to the Royal Victoria Hospital.

I am so pleased to hear that you where able to get wheelchair from reception, we have a team of porters within the front of house team that are based at reception to take people to their appointments and visit their loved ones. I will pass your kind words to the porters in particular the gentleman whom was able to get you your wheelchair.

Can I again thank you for leaving your story on Care Opinion it means a lot that you have shared your story with us so that we can learn and change.

Many thanks

Kevin Patterson