Royal Surrey County Hospital car park opens

Multi-storey facility will provide spaces for staff and free up land space

A new multi-storey staff car park is now open at Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford. The development provides an additional 194 parking spaces in total, with 50 further bays now allocated for public use on the main hospital site.

The opening of the car park means that 40 staff spaces at the front of the hospital have now been reallocated from staff to visitors, as well as an additional 10 spaces reallocated for oncology patients at the back of the hospital near Royal Surrey’s St Luke’s Cancer Centre.

Ross Dunworth, the Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust’s deputy chief executive said: “I am hopeful that our parking provision will now finally match the high quality of care that we provide. I am sure that this will be extremely welcome news for our community who have struggled to park in good time for their appointments and found it stressful to come and visit loved ones.

“I am also delighted for our dedicated staff who have had parking issues. I am really hopeful that this multi-storey will be a vast improvement. Thank you to our local community and to Guildford Borough Council for supporting this much needed build.”

Patients and staff played an important role in the success of the planning application by offering their support during public engagement. Over 1,200 responses were received on the feedback survey that accompanied the online engagement event for the project. Half of the responses were from hospital staff and the remaining came from the wider community with 99% agreeing that more parking was needed at the hospital.”

The car park was created for Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust by developer Prime.

Bob Smaylen, development director at Prime, said: “This development milestone marks the culmination of two years of complex work to meet the needs of the trust and Royal Surrey County Hospital’s patients and visitors to create a facility that supports outstanding outcomes for the local health system.”

VINCI Building constructed the car park and is continuing with works on adjacent land, previously used as a temporary car park, to create a new private oncology centre. Construction works on the new GenesisCare cancer centre and research hub are due to complete this autumn with fitout to follow. The cancer centre will have its own dedicated car park to serve patients and staff of the new centre.

Jason Griffiths, regional director at VINCI, said: “Delivering the project has been a great team effort. This scheme will deliver great outcomes for the hospital and the NHS.”