Meeting Tonight

Residents meeting tonight 7pm at St Josephs Parish Centre. All welcome.

Notes from the meeting held Tuesday 3rd August:

B Smith questioned K Heads proposal in the Workshop minutes that association members should knock on doors during the consultation process in order to re-engage with the public. At the previous workshop meeting it had been stated that council personnel would undertake this. The members agreed that we were not qualified to knock on doors and answer residents’ questions. Professionals would be able to get a better response. The meeting agreed this should be clarified at the next workshop meeting.
Cllr Kay stated the costing of the parking management scheme should be made clear at the next workshop meeting. This was agreed.
K Wilkinson stated we should make sure that the council are proposing our suggested scheme to the residents. We need to see the questions before they are put to the public.
L Ranton stated it needed to be impressed upon the council that the scheme needed to be implemented as soon as possible. Only that morning the police had to be called because both ends of Bexley St back lane were blocked by parked cars for at least two hours. A witness to this was a potential house buyer. He stated he “would never buy a house in this street”.
M Langley stated the situation in Washington Street was now dreadful. Elderly residents had no chance to park near their front doors. If they did go out they could not get parked on their return.
S Adamson stated the council were proposing that the easiest way to fund the scheme would be to allow the hospital permits for four years. Cllr Dixon stated that the residents would then still have to foot the bill following this. The meeting agreed wholeheartedly that hospital permits could not be accepted.
S Rackstraw showed the meeting a copy of the Hospital Chief Executive’s bulletin to his staff stating that following the demolition of the Kayll Road block there would be a further 139 car parking spaces. (This was as stated in their planning application to build a 136 bed extension). Also they were still looking at ways of possibly funding a multi-story car park. Cllr Kay stated that a multi-story car park would not work if visitors were charged to park.
The hospital received a very good revenue from parking fees.
The meeting agreed drivers would only pay if they had no choice and could not park in the side streets. M Adamson suggested extending the 1hr afternoon residents’ only parking to 2hrs in order to deter visitors. The meeting agreed it was ironic that people would pay to shop in the city centre but would not pay to visit their friends and relations in hospital.

The meeting agreed that even with multi-storey car parking for staff, visitors and outpatients would still rather park in the side streets than pay. Therefore it would be better if at least afternoon restrictions were for two hours rather than one to deter them. Following discussion it was agreed that this would restrict access for shop and business customers and this was not what we wanted. Cllr Dixon had recently visited the Freeman Hospital and noted that 1hr morning and 1hr afternoon restrictions worked very well. M Greenfield stated the problems were mainly caused by staff parking from early morning to late at night. S Rackstraw stated the only guaranteed parking for staff was at Clanny House, otherwise staff paid for permits but were not guaranteed parking on-site. Recently the hospital had agreed for parking in the ROAB car park in Rutland St. She also reported that two outpatients had recently telephoned to say they could not keep their appointments because they could not find somewhere to park. The meeting agreed that at least 50% of visitors to the hospital were disabled or elderly and yet there was not enough disabled parking on site for them. K Wilson reported one man having to drop his wife off at the hospital for an appointment and finally parking at the Barnes Hotel! Cllr Kay stated the hospital should be encouraged to build a multi-storey car park. S Adamson stated that Mr Newell was keen to involve the hospital trust in talks as soon as a scheme was put together to avoid objections at a later stage.

Correspondence
L Ranton reported that as a letter had been received from the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman informing that the Hospital Trust had stated they had not yet received a “formal complaint” from the residents only “enquiries”, a Formal Letter of complaint, enclosing copies of previous letters sent since the Association had been formed, had been sent to Mr Bremner, Chief Executive of the Hospital Trust. A letter had been received from the Trust Complaints Dept acknowledging receipt of our Formal Complaint, thanking us for “bringing the matter to their attention” and a reply should be sent to us by the end of August. A copy of this letter and our previous letters sent and received had also been sent to Mr Tim O’Mahoney, the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman who had acknowledged receipt of our letter with a reference number! A letter had also been sent to Mr John Anderson, Chairman of the Hospital Board of Governors, informing of our complaints and requesting his assistance. A Robinson reported that as requested at the last meeting a letter had been sent to Mr Paul Watson, Leader of the Council, expressing our concerns that they don’t lose sight over the other issues, including the state of the roads and pavements, discussed at the last meeting. He had replied stating he had passed on our concerns to the relevant Department.
A Robinson stated that at the previous Workshop meeting, Mr James Newell had stated that before implementation of a Parking Management Scheme it would be necessary to gain approval from the Department of Transport. She showed the meeting a copy of a letter received by us from the D.o.T. explaining that the Council had already sort advice from them on various traffic signing schemes and received approval. The letter explained the Council already had the powers apart from seeking legal advice to impose a parking management scheme without seeking further approval. This letter would be shown to Mr Newell.


Following discussion the meeting agreed that without our campaign the Hospital would never accept their responsibility for the present chaos in our local side streets. Cllr Kay stated that had any of the previous planning applications for extensions from the Hospital been refused by the Council the Hospital would have appealed and the council would have had to “shell out” lots of money in order to defend their decision and the Hospital would still win the right to extend. Cllr Dixon agreed the Hospital would always use emotional blackmail i.e the rights of patients to the best care available in order to build new extensions and facilities.
M Greenfield stated that in both Newcastle and Middlesbrough it had been necessary to impose parking management schemes in the areas around the hospitals. These had been in operation for up to ten years. Sunderland council has been very slow to follow suit. S Smith stated it had been pointed out many years ago when the Royal Infirmary had been closed that it would be impossible to get all the surrounding hospitals onto one site. M Greenfield stated “you can’t rewrite history” you can only learn from it.
The meeting agreed that our original plan put to the workshop was the best. They agreed that the council now had the right approach and were determined to put a workable scheme together as we were the “pilot” for the rest of the city.

B Smith raised the issue of the state of the side streets. Flooding during heavy rainfall was now a frequent occurrence. The meeting agreed that because of the saturated street parking it would be impossible for drain cleaning or maintenance to take place during normal working hours. Cllr Dixon stated that if a resident did have a problem they should approach their local councillor who would then report to the council. L Ranton re-affirmed the meeting’s feelings by stating that once the parking problem was solved then the other issues could be more easily resolved. M Adamson stated that it should be impressed upon the workshop that the parking scheme needed to be implemented as soon as possible as the situation was getting urgent. The meeting also agreed that it should be impressed upon the residents in the coming consultation that if they did not want the hospital to have parking permits it would be necessary for them to commit to paying, if not for first car, then any second car. M Langley stated that other authorities where residents only parking was free were now considering charging. We needed assurance that the council would not raise the fees again in the near future in order to gain further revenue. Cllr Kay stated the residents should be informed that if they did not wish to pay for a second named car, they could perhaps purchase a visitors' permit for their friends and relations etc. The meeting was informed this would not include carers and tradesmen as they would be allowed to park for free. A sensible approach to tradesmen by the traffic enforcement officers, as in other similar areas, would be necessary.

B Smith offered to advertise our meetings by contacting Dorothy McQuillan who is Editor for the Barnes area in “Down Your Way” in the Sunderland Echo. The meeting agreed a lot of people were quite happy to sit back and let us fight for them and many did not realise how far we had come towards getting a successful parking management scheme organised.

Cllr Kay stated it was necessary to keep our campaign in the front line as once new spending reviews are imposed in the Autumn the council would be looking to prioritise spending. L Ranton agreed it was necessary to keep pressing for a start date for implementation to keep the council focussed.

A Tumman asked if our association and its campaign came under the Prime Ministers plan for the Big Community to take charge of its own affairs. Following light-hearted discussion the meeting agreed they “could not answer this question”!

E Lardner informed the meeting that St Joseph’s Parish Centre where our meetings were mainly held would be closed and demolished in December 2011 as part of the plans to build a new primary school. At a meeting with the Parish Priest, the Centre’s committee had been informed that a community hall would be part of the plans but this would not include a bar or anywhere near the fine facilities we now had.

A Robinson had received a letter inviting association members to a Social Night at the Stadium of Light on Tuesday 14th September to meet members of the Armed Forces and promote a better understanding of the Army. A Tumman, J Hickman and B Smith volunteered to attend on behalf of the association.

The meeting closed at 8.20pm
The next meeting to be Tuesday 7th September in St Joseph’s Parish Centre at 7.0pm