Free Car Parking at Hospital Sites

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:30 pm on 6 February 2019.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 2:30, 6 February 2019

I'll deal with your first point about the time it's taken. I'm very proud that the Welsh Labour commitment has been delivered. We were not able to deliver it as quickly as we had wanted to because of the long-term contracts that existed—if you were listening to my first answer you would have heard me say that—and there was a practical point about the cost to the public purse in buying out those contracts. We now have a full estate of free parking for patients, and we look forward to England catching up with us. Despite long-held promises by the current Government, they do not have the same level of achievement that we can celebrate here in Wales, and I'm sure you'd join with me in recognising that. 

On the broader point about traffic management, this is a real challenge, not just in making sure that patients can park, but actually staff parking as well. That's partly about the efficient use of our large and significant sites—there are a large number of traffic movements on and off during the day—but also about encouraging people to take alternative ways of getting on to hospital sites, whether that's in Cardiff, where there is a park and ride facility, or, indeed, on the one that I've used with the Deputy Presiding Officer around Glan Clwyd. So, it's about a range of measures to make sure that people who do need to get onto the site are able to do so and to make proper use of that. And that is what we expect health boards to deliver in managing properly each hospital estate.