More on KentOnline
More on KentOnline
Patients are being forced to park inconsiderately in lanes and on grass verges when they visit a hospital.
An application to expand staff parking at Maidstone Hospital has highlighted the problems patients and their families face every day on their way to treatment.
Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust wants to add a concrete deck above its existing car park off Hermitage Lane to provide 211 spaces for staff only.
Designers visited Maidstone Hospital in November last year, where they saw cars blocking a two-way ring road, staff parked in the middle aisle, again blocking traffic and vehicles abandoned on green verges.
The expansion at Maidstone comes after the hospital was identified as one of three that will be upgraded to provide Hyper Acute Stroke Services.
The hospital is also home to the Kent Oncology Centre, which treats cancer patients from across the county.
Documents submitted by Stripe Consulting, on behalf of the hospital's trust read: "Patients with either of these two conditions rely heavily on relatives giving them a lift to hospital for treatment with very limited numbers choosing to move by public transport.
"To accommodate additional visitor parking on site arising from these two new healthcare services provided, the trust is planning to reassign some of its staff parking spaces to patients and visitors parking.
"To re-provide the displaced staff car parking, the trust is seeking to obtain planning permission for a single deck car park comprising 208 spaces on the northern part of staff Car Park (at the southern end of the site) and would provide for 211 net additional car parking spaces overall. This re-provision is considered to be necessary as the site does not have capacity to accommodate the
transfer without replacement provision."
If approved, the total number of parking spaces at Maidstone Hospital would rise to around 700.
MTW NHS Trust has plans to improve parking at Tunbridge Wells Hospital in Pembury.
As of December, the trust said it hoped to add around 150 spaces to the hospital, which only opened to the public in 2011.
Tunbridge Wells Hospital has 447 visitor spaces and 818 staff spaces.
The trust has submitted an application, which can be viewed by the public once Tunbridge Wells Borough Council validates it.
