Car park management system will be introduced at Sheepmarket Surgery in Stamford as car park at St Mary's Surgery closes to all but blue badge holders because of vaccines
A private firm is being brought in to run the car park at Sheepmarket Surgery in Stamford in the middle of February, and only blue badge holders will be able to park at St Mary's Medical Centre.
Lakeside Healthcare, which runs the surgery, said that during a public engagement survey focused on the proposed closure of St Mary's Medical Centre, patients were "clear" that car parking was an issue at Sheepmarket.
Lakeside undertook an audit between September and November, which found that a "significant proportion of Sheepmarket Surgery car parking spaces are used on a regular basis by vehicles that do not belong to our patients".
This includes contractors working at the hospital site, visitors to the hospital as well as members of the public utilising free parking and walking into town instead of paying for the council provided parking in the town centre.
In addition, the hospital has closed started to close parts of its car park in preparation for its building work.
To address this, the surgery is installing an automatic number plate recognition system and Total Parking Solutions will be managing the car park.
Patients attending the surgery will have 30 minutes to then provide their vehicle registration details on a tablet at the surgery reception or dispensary.
Once you have entered your registration patients will have a maximum parking time of two hours.
Anyone who uses the car park without validating their parking or exceeding the two-hour limit will be issued with a Parking Charge Notice (PCN) £70, which, if paid within 14 days, will reduce to £40. All charges are payable to Total Parking Solutions Ltd.
Lakeside said: "The surgery receives no financial or other benefit from implementing this system, it is being implemented in response to concerns raised by patients and findings from our own research.
"If patients believe they have incorrectly received a parking charge, they should follow the practice complaints procedure.
"The system has already been installed and will be live from Monday, February 15."
It comes as the car park at St Mary's Medical Centre in Wharf Road has been closed to all but blue badge holders after marquees were erected to provide queuing patients shelter from the weather as they wait for their Covid-19 vaccinations.
The nearest car park to the surgery is a pay and display car park in Wharf Road. It costs £2.30 for up to two hours and the machine takes cash.
For the benefit of readers travelling to the surgery for their vaccine from Bourne, the Mercury includes a map below which indicates St Mary's Medical Centre as Lakeside Healthcare in red and Wharf Road car park in purple to the right. Patients travelling from Bourne should be aware the car park entrance will be on the left hand side of the road, before the surgery.
