Worthing Hospital finds spaces for volunteer drivers

Arun Co-ordinated Community Transport group, which drives disabled and elderly patients to the hospital every day, was told their spaces were unavailable while building work is carried out.

Because the four dedicated parking spaces were inaccessible, the group would have had to pay to park in the main hospital car park.

Volunteer driver Shirley Western, 74, said: “I am happy to say the hospital has now found us space to park in, so we will not have to charge the patients, which we were obviously very concerned about.”

The group receives about 4,000 calls a month to take people to hospital.

Paul Hatcher, director of estates and facilities at Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “We have recently met with the Arun Co-ordinated Community Transport, to further explain and clarify our plans about our temporary car park arrangements.

“We are confident these provisional arrangements have been made clearer and, hopefully, there should be no further problems.

“We have also sent an invitation to other voluntary groups serving Worthing Hospital to come in and talk to us if our plans are still unclear.

“In addition we have assigned a security officer to the revised entrance to assist in directing traffic and to prevent vehicles going into the wrong area.

“We have arrangements in place with TPW, the car parking company running the public car parks, to allow spaces for volunteer drivers to drop off patients without incurring any charge.”

Worthing Hospital is currently undergoing refurbishment works to the accident and emergency department and a new outpatient and ward block is being built.