New parking system at Princess Royal Hospital
The automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system will be activated on Wednesday 8th June 2016, the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) announced today.
Rather than using the old ‘pay and display’ ticket system, ANPR reads your car’s number plate when you arrive and leave the car park. Visitors can then pay for parking via cash, debit or credit card, and they can choose to pay either on-site when they’re about to leave, or via telephone or online later on.
It is hoped that this system will make the parking process easier for visitors, improve traffic flow on the car park, and remove the need to have exact change to pay with each time.
As well as this, new payment machines will be more reliable, sited under covers to shield customers from the elements, and there will be more machines located at the Women & Children’s Centre – which addresses a common complaint received by Healthwatch Telford and Wrekin ever since the new unit opened.
There will be no increase on current parking rates when the new system is switched on, and SaTH was keen to stress that their parking charges “are still among the cheapest in the country, with people being able to park for up to 30 minutes without charge, and paying £3.50 for five hours or more.”
“The ANPR system is being successfully used at RSH. We have spent some time making sure we have resolved most of the teething issues which you get when you introduce any new system,” Julia Clarke, Director of Corporate Governance at SaTH, said in the press release.
The Trust has also been exploring other ways to improve parking issues at the hospitals, such as by “encouraging more staff to think of alternative ways of getting to work,” Julia said. “People who car share are being offered ‘premium’ car parking spaces and more cycle shelters have been installed at both sites, with improvements made to shower and changing facilities to encourage more people to cycle to work.”
Healthwatch Telford and Wrekin will be at the PRH car park on the day of the launch to gather feedback about the new system from visitors to the hospital. Keep an eye out for our volunteers, and let us know what your thoughts are.
