Worthing clampers defend parking controls

The Light of Life Christmas carol concert for St Barnabas hospice was held at the Assembly Hall last week and attended by more than 800 people.

Many were forced to park in nearby streets when the Civic Centre car park, which is free for evening parking, became full.

The problem area is beside the Civic Centre car park adjoining the NHS-owned Central Clinic.

Night patrol

This car park is allocated for day-time car parking for doctors and nurses attending the clinic.

At night-time, it is empty but is still patrolled by Worthing-based clamping company Parking Control Management South Ltd.

Ten motorists, including three bandmen from the Salvation Army who were playing at the concert, found their cars, which they had parked in the "private" area, were clamped.

It cost them each a 130 release fee.

Defending actions

Lukhbir Gohler, office manager for Parking Control Management South Ltd. defended the company's actions.

He said about a year ago the West Sussex NHS Trust, which runs the clinic, contacted the company because doctors and nurses were having problems with overnight parkers in their spaces.

"The car park is provided for the use of staff at the clinic, but on numerous occasions they found they were arriving for work and finding cars parked in their spaces.

"It meant they were forced to pay at other town car parks to leave their cars, and clearly this was unacceptable," he said.

Cars left

He said the problem was being caused by people going to pubs and clubs in the area, parking their cars in the clinic car park and deciding to leave them overnight.

Beverley Sim, the manager at Central Clinic, said: "Over the past couple of years, the parking situation had become so out of control that our disabled patients had been unable to park here and staff were getting boxed in and therefore unable to go out on visits.

"Patients were also arriving late for appointments.

"We didn't want to introduce controls but we simply had to do something to protect our staff and patients so NHS West Sussex arranged for Parking Control Management (South) to provide a free service for us about a year ago, which has helped us enormously and provided a much better service to all those who use the clinic."

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