PLANNING bosses at Scotland's largest local authority have denied "shutting down" a 700-space car park which could help relieve a hospital parking crisis.
The Herald revealed last week that Stirling-based construction firm, Ogilvie, had raised an objection to NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde's application for a 500-capacity temporary car park 15 minutes walk from the new Southern General University Hospital.
The firm said it was an "unnecessary use of public funding" when Ogilvie already owned a vacant parking lot with space for 700 vehicles just yards from the new hospital campus, in Hardgate Road.
Health chiefs have been under fire over a shortage of parking at the new hospital, due to open in April, and hoped the 500 extra spaces would help plug the shortfall.
Ogilvie's car park was originally used as a car park for contractors working on the hospital build, but a spokesman said they had been approached last year by staff from the existing Southern General who asked whether they could gain access at a "reasonable daily rate".
Ogilvie agreed and charged £3 per day, but the arrangement was axed after two weeks "on instructions from Glasgow City Council". Bosses at the construction firm insist they were warned that they would be served with an enforcement notice, thought to relate to a ban on the owners using the car park commercially.
However, following a meeting between the local authority and representatives of Ogilvie on Friday, the council denied this.
According to the council's version of events, the planning department was notified of an "alleged unauthorised car park" on November 26 2014, but following an inspection found "no breach".
A spokeswoman for Glasgow City Council said: "As far as the council is concerned, the continued use of this land as a car park does not breach the planning permission for the site."
The confusion seems to hinge on what the council means by car park, however, with a spokesman for Ogilvie saying that the company remained unclear on whether it is free to open the car park back up to NHS staff.
A spokesman for Ogilvie Group said: "We are currently considering options for the Hardgate Road site after meeting with City of Glasgow Planning Department."
The new hospital replaces the Victoria and Western Infirmaries, Yorkhill hospital, old Southern General and Mansionhouse Unit.
More than 10,000 staff will be based there, but there will be only 2,500 car parking spaces for staff and visitors when it fully opens in June. Another 1,000 will be added in 2016.
The Ogilvie car park appears to offer a quick-fix salvo to NHS GGC's parking headache, with the first staff due on site from April.
However, the health board is reluctant to endorse an arrangement which would see staff paying for parking out of their own pocket.
Instead, they previously offered to pay Ogilvie a flat fee in exchange for allowing permit-holding NHS employees to access the car park for free until the new hospital's multi-storey car parks are completed.
The talks ended in stalemate and the health board applied for planning permission to construct its own, temporary 500 space car park at Linthouse Road.
No one at NHS GGC was present at Friday's meeting.
A spokeswoman for the Royal College of Nursing Scotland urged all sides to break the deadlock.
She said: "With seven weeks to go we now urgently need a solution to allow nurses and others to get to work in the new hospital. The public recognise the need to get nurses to work, local MSPs recognise the need, yet neither the health board nor the council seem to realise just how important this is.
"It's time for everyone involved to listen and put in place parking and public transport to allow staff to get to the hospital in time for staff being transferred there in April."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article