Only new car park will fix chaos at QE, say councillors
BIRMINGHAM’S Queen Elizabeth Hospital has been urged to stop “fannying about” and build a multi-storey car park to tackle the chronic shortage of parking spaces.
City planners made the call as they approved a new set of parking restrictions for Edgbaston, Harborne and Selly Oak near the giant hospital and University of Birmingham sites.
They claimed the restrictions, which could include double yellow lines, pay and display spaces and limited waiting time restrictions will help residents in those streets but not deal with the larger problem of insufficient parking spaces for staff and visitors.
Committee member Gareth Moore (Cons, Erdington) said: “We have created a hell for residents. I welcome that finally we are doing something about that.”
He accused the hospital and council’s transport department of “fannying about” with “airy fairy” measures like car share schemes and encouraging staff public transport saying:
“As much as you may try to get away from it, people do drive cars to work. The hospital should build another car park because that is what is needed.”
He was backed by Cllr Barry Henley (Lab, Brandwood) who said the residents parking schemes would tackle the symptom but not the cause of the parking problems and could move the parking problems on to other surrounding streets. He said: “They have got to provide at the least another 1,000 parking space on their site.”
Cllr Peter Douglas Osborn (Cons, Weoley) added: “There’s one solution to this and that is to build a multi-storey car park.”
The committee heard that the hospital has 8,800 staff and almost a million patients a year, many more than the 6,500 staff and 650,000 patients a year predicted when it opened in 2010.
It has 3,501 parking spaces on with 1,686 reserved for staff.
Parking around the huge super hospital and rapidly expanding university campus has been a major issue with residents frequently complaining that their roads and drives are blocked with staff and visitors’ cars.
The hospital has agreed to pay £65,700 towards the new parking restrictions. The city council is also drawing up a Hospital and University Master Plan, to be published next year, which will guide future development in the area including public transport and car parking. site,