Oxford hospital parking 'inadequate' says council chief

The leader of Oxford City Council has said he is in favour of building more parking facilities at the city's John Radcliffe Hospital.

Bob Price said the 730 spaces at the medical centre are "simply inadequate".

He admitted the council - as the planning authority - was part of the problem for limiting the number of spaces on the site.

The hospital trust advises patients to leave themselves an extra hour to find parking.

The city council has opposed increasing capacity at the hospital as it would increase the amount of traffic going through Headington.

But Mr Price said that as the local NHS is transformed, more services that were formerly based in other hospitals will take place at the John Radcliffe Hospital, increasing the number of patients.

He added: "It's going to get worse as if you look at the transformation plans, which the clinical commissioning group has put together, then the concentration of facilities at the John Radcliffe is only likely to increase rather than decrease.

"It's traditionally been the case that we try to reduce traffic growth in the city, but as you can see it's simply inadequate."

Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which operates the site, said it was working on a "masterplan" in a bid to solve the problem.

It said: "Our current access and parking problems will not be solved overnight. However, we are hoping to have some initial broad concepts for wider discussion in the early part of 2017.

"For the time being, we do encourage both staff and visitors to make use of alternative transport options including local park and ride services."