Hospital patient transport vehicles blocking Brighton roads, residents say

People living near a busy hospital said that vehicles used to transport patients were blocking their driveways.

Neighbours of the Royal Sussex County Hospital, in Brighton, raised the issue at a Hospital Liaison Group meeting to try to tackle the problem affecting properties in Bristol Gate.

In a joint statement to the hospital management at the meeting last night (Monday 3 April), neighbours said that the vehicles causing the problems were not emergency ambulances.

But they were parked across driveways with their engines running for long periods and with exhaust fumes blowing straight into people’s homes “for hours”, they said.

The neighbours’ joint statement said: “Sometimes there’s a line of these vehicles stretching down the road, blocking access, and all these vehicles will just sit with engines idling, sometimes four in a row.

“When a vehicle is eventually signalled by the traffic officer that a space has become available, it moves away and within moments the next one moves up and takes its place.

“Sometimes it can be an annoyance when you have to stop a vehicle in the road and get out to ask the driver to move just so we can get access to our own driveways.

“It can be difficult, almost dangerous, just trying to pull off from our own driveways.”

Bigger vehicles were also causing problems for Bristol Estate residents trying to reach Bowring Way, the meeting was told.

A senior official from University Hospitals Sussex, the trust that runs the Royal Sussex, said that transport staff were employed to direct vehicles into the site to drop off patients.

Dave Harbutt said that patient transport drivers should drop people off at the “hammerhead” – a wider point along the hospital’s north service road.

Mr Harbutt said that the team kept traffic moving and stopped drivers from leaving their engines idling as they queued for the car park off the hospital’s north access road.

He said: “Everything should be going there (to the hammerhead) and dropping off and moving on. They shouldn’t be in Bristol Gate parked up for hours on end.

“We cannot enforce on the highway but we can actively encourage people to move along.”

And once the new Louisa Martindale Building was fully opened, patient transport drivers would use a dedicated layby at the front, in Eastern Road, where the discharge lounge would be.

Residents shared a video with Richard Beard, a communications manager at the trust, and he said that the issue was “troubling”.

He added that the trust had spoken with patient transport operators to try to resolve the problem.

Mr Beard said: “Our security operations have been going out and having conversations. They are reporting back on what that’s looking like.

“I have shared residents’ concerns with the hospital’s director and head of security. I hope we can see some movement now we have more space at the ‘hammerhead’.”