ORDINARY mortals submitting a planning application to build have to demonstrate on the plans that sufficient parking space has been included.

If they cannot do so, the application may well be refused. Why was such not the case for plans to build the new hospital?

This was no oversight. We now have the spectacle of busy professionals wasting their time taking part in a Think Tank (particularly those engaged in getting the new Primary Care Trust up and running) to resolve the lack of parking after the event.

When Mr Blair graced these pages on March 3 2002, with his message about its opening, he said he expected there to be "teething problems" by which he did not mean that we cannot find any NHS dentists.

He said: "The new £95m hospital's been specially designed... to meet (staff's) needs and more importantly those of their patients..."

He said that with a PFI built hospital... "these problems will have to be put right quickly. And not at the expense of the taxpayer as in the past but by those who built this new NHS hospital."

I do not see any representative of Catalyst on the Think Tank and fail to grasp how insufficient bed space, too-narrow corridors and lack of parking can be tweaked after the event by anyone.

Taxpayers' money is being wasted and the credibility of the judgement of those responsible for striking the terms of this PFI deal severely questioned.

Australia has permanently halted plans to finance health services via PFI deals having learnt painful lessons.

Will Mr Blair and fellow thinkers kindly consider a pause in this direction and open their eyes to the real disadvantages experienced by most district general hospitals built and financed by this means?

WENDY HANDS,

Upton upon Severn.