Hospital Access Plan
Hospital Access Plan
The hospital
The University Hospital Southampton provides services to 1.9 million people living in Southampton and South Hampshire, as well as providing specialist services to over 3.7 million people across Southern England and the Channel islands. The range of clinics and health services provided at the campus has increased in recent years.
The University Hospital Southampton NHS Trust employs over 13,000 staff, who treat over 150,000 inpatients, see over 585,000 outpatients and deal with around 120,000 cases in our emergency department each year.
The City Council and University Hospital Southampton both recognise that this increase in staff, patients and visitor numbers requires action to be taken to manage and improve the supply of parking at the Hospital, ease traffic congestion that is occurring on the roads close to the hospital site and collective effort to encourage more people to make use of bus services, or walk and cycle to the site.
What the hospital has done to improve parking and access
To seek to reduce congestion on roads around the site and improve overall access, the hospital has:
- Installed smart patient and visitor active signage to direct Patients and visitors to
available spaces in car parks - Upgraded the patient and visitor car park barrier machines to speed up entry and exit from the site
- Changed the routing of cars within the hospital grounds to create a more balanced flow of traffic using Tremona Road and Coxford Road entrances and exits
- Invested in improved cyclist and pedestrian access, improved cycling facilities, discounted bus travel for staff and promoted a car sharing scheme for staff
To reduce the pressure on car parking for patients and visitors, the hospital has:
- Constructed a new multi-storey car park for staff, freeing up 300 spaces that were formerly staff spaces to be made available for patients and visitors including the Blue car park (accessed via Tremona Road) to allow people to park at the back of the site closer to their clinics
- Provided a park and ride service for hospital staff who are not eligible to receive on site staff parking
However, more needs to be done to address congestion and parking challenges. To this end, both the Hospital and Southampton City Council are jointly developing a Hospital Access Plan.
What is the purpose of the Hospital Access Plan?
It will describe the problems and issues that currently exist and set out what will be done to improve access to the hospital. It will acknowledge and seek to address the adverse impacts of hospital-related activity on residents of surrounding streets.
This will take the form of an action plan of measures setting out actions that will be taken in the short, medium and longer term. The Access Plan is intended to be a ‘living’ plan of actions that will be regularly reviewed and updated via this webpage.
Elements of the Access Plan will be guided by and informed by the Hospital’s formal strategies on estates and travel planning, within which strategic decisions about the future management and planning of the Hospital site are made.
Engagement with local residents to understand issues and potential solutions
An important stage in the development of the Hospital Access Plan is to engage with residents, businesses, public and community transport operators and the hospital community.
Therefore, on 21 November 2017, local residents living near the hospital were invited to attend a consultation event at the Hospital. This provided an opportunity for residents, businesses and the hospital community to share their views on issues and problems and offer their views and suggestions about where future improvements could be made to transport and parking within the hospital and where changes to parking and streets are needed in the local area.
The event was attended by around 350 people, and the top five issues raised were:
- On-street parking by hospital staff/users causing issues for residents
- No loading' restrictions needed on double yellows to remove blue badge parking congestion
- On-site parking within the hospital site itself (the quantity of it, signage and car park management)
- A review of existing RPZ restrictions on streets around the hospital is needed
- Concerns about hospital car parks access queues
The following documents are available to download from this webpage:
- The information boards used at the 21 November event
- A summary document which provides analysis of the feedback received by theme and topic, what has been done already and the next steps
- A full list of all comments made by attendees and a response of what the Hospital and City Council are going to do about each issue
Next steps
- The City Council will be discussing with local bus operators their ideas and suggestions for making bus access to the hospital easier
- An update letter will be sent out to all residents within the Hospital Access Plan consultation area summarising the headline feedback raised by residents at the engagement event
- The Council will over the coming months develop proposals for comprehensive changes and extensions to Residents permit holder Parking Zone 7, and consider where it would be beneficial to introduce double yellow lines and ‘no loading’ restrictions to improve the flow of traffic, further details on these proposals will be made available on this webpage together with further written correspondence about this with affected residents
| Document | Type | Size |
|---|---|---|
| Hospital Access Plan - Exhibition Boards Nov 2017 | 4.0 MB | |
| Hospital Access Plan - Summary of themes and issues | 290.8 KB | |
| Hospital Access Plan - All Comments and response Nov 2017 | 187.9 KB |
