A COUNCILLOR has hit out at selfish drivers who have been causing a headache for disabled patients and visitors at Inverclyde Royal by parking in blue badge spaces.
Councillor Martin McCluskey says he's had a great deal of correspondence from hospital users frustrated about inconsiderate parking and some of the hospital’s lifts being out of service.
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Ex-councillor and disabled parking space user Gerry Dorrian, 72, is one of those who has been experiencing problems at the IRH.
He said: “There’s cars parking in the disabled car park without displaying a disabled badge.
“If you’ve got a disabled badge and you’ve got to walk over to the hospital it knocks you for six.
“I can’t walk the length of myself because I get really breathless, in fact I get all my appointments scheduled at nine in the morning to make sure I get a space.
“I can’t afford to be walking that distance.
“I don’t think it’s people with disabled badges, I think it’s just selfishness.
“The health board has to take on some sort of enforcement agency.
“Whether they pay the council to do that or someone else I don’t know, but there has to be something done.
“The other issue here is the lifts, they’re a nightmare.
“Inside the hospital one of the lifts has been out since Adam was a boy, they need to get it fixed and get more of them online."
Councillor McCluskey wrote to the health board about the concerns he had received regarding the lifts back in January and is now urging hospital bosses to resolve both issues quickly.
He added: “They’re well aware of the issues with people getting parked, the ongoing issue with the lifts and I know that they’re looking closely at the issue to do with the disabled parking bays.
“The board can try and enforce it [blue badge use] but there’s also an element of personal responsibility.
“If you’re eligible for a blue badge then apply for it, if you don’t have one then don’t park in those spaces.
“Everyone faces the same sort of issues with parking here, but you have to leave those spaces for the people that need it.
“When it comes to the lifts it’s been slow and it’s been ongoing, the health board have held their hands up and admitted that, but they need to speed it up.
“I’ve been in visiting myself over the past few weeks and at peak visiting hours there have been some days when there’s just been one lift in the evenings.
“If someone’s coming to the hospital, they might be pressed for time, they could be looking to spend an hour with their relative, but that suddenly might just turn into half an hour between waiting 15 minutes to get up and then back down again.
“It needs to get remedied quickly, I’m hoping the volume of correspondence and complaints they’re getting from people about this speeds things up.
“It’s affecting the quality of people’s visits and treatment.”
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In response to the concerns about parking, an NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde spokesperson said: “We want to ensure that patients and visitors are able to park when attending hospital.
“Unfortunately, there are occasions when this is difficult due to inconsiderate parking.
“This is an issue that we keep under close review and as part of this we have re-engaged with the Inverclyde Council to discuss the possibility of implementing a Traffic Regulation Order which will allow the local authority wardens to ticket inappropriately parked vehicles.
“In the meantime, the local facilities team are committed to providing additional resource to help monitor and control access to blue badge spaces and during peak times staff are on site to support patients who require blue badge parking spaces.
“We are also in the process of identifying a dedicated resource to monitor blue badge spaces and discourage inappropriate parking in disabled bays.”
Health board bosses added that they hoped to refurbish the lifts in the near future.
They said: “We apologise for any inconvenience caused to patients as a result of one of the lifts temporarily being unavailable.
“There is a new 12-month programme of upgrade in place which will see all passenger lifts refurbished to improve service resilience and reliability.”
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