Thank you for your petition and for voicing your concerns regarding the recent changes to parking arrangements at Stepping Hill Hospital. We recognise that parking is a significant issue for many staff, and we are committed to ensuring that our policies are fair, transparent, and supportive of all who work so hard to care for our patients. Changes to car parking on site were necessary due to safety concerns, which has to remain our priority.

Acknowledging Your Concerns

We understand the frustration and stress that parking difficulties can cause, especially at the start and end of demanding shifts. The feedback from staff, including those with young children and those with disabilities, has been heard and is being taken seriously. We also acknowledge the concerns raised about the subcontracted enforcement, the clarity of parking criteria, and the impact on staff wellbeing and operational effectiveness.

Current Situation and Rationale for Change

The Trust faces significant challenges regarding parking capacity and site constraints. With over 5,900 staff, alongside patients and visitors, demand for parking often exceeds supply. Recent changes, including the introduction of barriered staff car parks, criteria-based permit allocation, and enhanced enforcement, were implemented to improve safety, accessibility, and fairness for all users. These measures were developed following extensive engagement with staff, patients, and the local community, including over 1,000 participants in consultation events earlier this year.

Before the new parking measures were introduced, our site was often unsafe. Emergency access was frequently obstructed, essential areas such as gas supplies blocked and limited spaces were available to our patients and visitors. Since the introduction of the changes, our site has become safe, and we have started to address the inequalities patients were facing when attending for appointments.

Over the past eleven months we’ve been delivering a large and complex Car Parking Transformation Programme across the Stepping Hill site. This has around twenty projects running in parallel and we’re now moving from the tactical phase into the longer-term strategic work. The first priority has been to make the site safe and to regain control of car parks that had been heavily misused over recent years. We’ve made good progress, but fully recognise that these improvements take time to settle and can create short-term challenges for those who rely on parking every day.

For context and transparency, the programme has included:

• A full consultation and permit collection exercise earlier this year with over 1,000 attendees,
• New barrier technology to ensure that only permit-holding staff access designated areas,
• Work with transport for greater Manchester, the council and other partners to expand off-site options,
• The introduction of criteria-based parking (used widely across NHS organisations with limited capacity),
• A soft-launch enforcement approach focused on changing habits rather than issuing fines,
• Ongoing creation of extra capacity, including a 50-space overspill car park opened in October and a further 180-space car park planned for completion by March 2026,
• Regular communications, a dedicated microsite and a wide range of signposting to alternative travel and parking choices.

Some of the pressures of recent weeks have come from the unexpectedly high number of staff who had not been paying for parking since the pandemic but re-applied at the very last moment. This sudden influx has put additional strain on capacity.

The difficulties faced by colleagues starting at 9 a.m. and by those joining later on-call shifts are real, and the carpark programme team are monitoring demand daily and responding wherever possible. For example, the team has now released around 130 spaces back to staff. We know this won’t solve everything, but it should make a noticeable difference to flow at peak times.

Actionable Solutions

The Staff Petition outlines a number of actionable solutions, and we’d like to address some of these concerns. We continue to listen, review and ensure the measures in place deliver fair, equitable and safe parking for all staff.

1. Re-evaluate the subcontract with the current parking enforcement company to ensure fair practice and better-defined parking criteria.

Enforcement services are essential in keeping the site safe, so that staff, patients and visitors do not park inappropriately which creates an unsafe environment. This ensures critical routes and roads are free at all times, emergency vehicles can access the site, and essential suppliers can also access service areas, including medical gases.

We have historically (as many Hospital Trust sites do) had formal parking enforcement services in place.  Up until the beginning of the COVID pandemic the Trust had Gemini Parking as its preferred supplier.  The decision to re-introduce parking enforcement was made as our site was no longer safe, due to inappropriate parking. Most of those attending our consultation and engagement sessions earlier in 2025 were supportive of the re-introduction as most people could recognise the dangers across the site. The enforcement subcontract has been reviewed as part of the car parking transformation project and these services are now operated by UKCPM.

We have now completed four weeks of enforcement warnings for those users contravening the rules and Highway code, where advisory notes were issued rather than parking charge notices (PCNs). Our plan was originally to have two weeks of enforcement notices, but we extended this by an additional two weeks, to allow us to work with our partner UKCPM to check and challenge the data, make tweaks and adjustment to ensure we introduced the service in a fair, equitable and ethical manner. Full enforcement i.e. formal PCN’s will start from Monday 1st December 2025.

We have also recently introduced a criteria based parking application process for staff parking permits. Many large organisations, including public and private sector organisation who have limited parking capacity, introduce similar schemes. This approach is about ensuring a fair and equitable means of allocating parking rights, ensuring those who pass the pre-defined criteria have the rights to apply for parking (whilst not guaranteed) and those who don’t are redirected to the ‘Alternatives to parking on site’, available on the our staff intranet ‘car parking transformation’ microsite and our Trust website.   

2. Increase the number of designated staff parking spaces to accommodate all working shifts.

As a small site, we have a limited amount of car parking capacity which must be balanced between staff, and patients and visitors.

Over the past two months we have been working hard to open as much parking capacity to staff as feasibly possible, whilst balancing the needs of patient and visitor parking. Right now, evidence shows that we are starting to achieve the right flow in patient and visitor parking (including disability parking), as spaces are more readily available to those visiting the site. (balanced availability).

We know that staff parking still feels pressured, and are therefore creating extra capacity in the following ways:

• In October we opened up the first of two overspill car parks; behind Chest clinic, which offers an additional 50 spaces
• The second overspill car park will reside on the old Outpatients B site and will offer approximately 180 additional spaces. We are currently seeking formal planning permission and aim to open by the end of March 26.

We are also continually monitoring the effectiveness of the site, and adapting the policy to continually improve, for example in November we removed access for Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust hospital staff from the staff car parks (at Stockport) and gave them access instead to the Patient and Visitor Car Parks.  This change provided an additional 150 spaces in our staff car parks.

Strategically we are working with APEX and Black Cat, car parking consultants/specialist firms to deliver a business case and help increase our parking capacity through a new multi-storey car park and to improve the flow and management of the site through numerous initiatives, including drop-off’s, taxi ranks, one-way systems, short stay car parks, etc.

Ultimately, it must be recognised that there is simply not enough space on our site to ensure there is the capacity for every person who wants to park their car. We signpost to a number of options for people who cannot park on site, including public transport links, alternative car parks in the area and park and ride access. We also support cycle to work and active travel schemes.

3. Establish flexible parking solutions that take into account the diverse needs of all staff members, including those with young children or disabilities.

We are listening to people’s concerns and our car parking transformation team are using these to continually review and adjust our approach.  We are currently evaluating a proposal to restrict the opening hours of one of our staff car parks i.e a later start time, but before we do this, we need to test the impact that this will have.   

Next Steps

• We will continue to listen to any concerns to assist in continually reviewing the arrangements with the parking enforcement company to ensure practices are fair, transparent, and proportionate.
• We are working to increase the number of designated staff spaces and to provide flexible solutions, including off-site options and improved communication about alternatives.
• Permit allocation criteria are under review, with a focus on equity and the diverse needs of our workforce.
• We will continue to promote active travel options, public transport, park and ride facilities and alternatives to parking on our site.
• Staff can also find further information on our car parking transformation microsite on our intranet.
• We will provide regular updates on progress and invite further feedback through staff communication channels. We can also arrange meetings for those who would like to discuss further.

Conclusion

We appreciate the dedication and professionalism of all our staff and are committed to finding balanced solutions that support your wellbeing and enable you to focus on patient care.

Thank you for raising your concerns, and we acknowledge the impact this is having. Your feedback is invaluable as we work together to address these challenges, and we will keep you updated as the next phase of the car park programme progresses.

Kind regards,
Karen James OBE,
Chief Executive