WHENEVER Worcestershire Royal Hospital crops up in conversation I count down the seconds until someone starts ranting about car parking. If I had a penny for every time this thorny issue was mentioned I would never need to buy a lottery ticket. I would already be a billionaire spreadeagled on a beach in California, contemplating the athletic prowess of a women’s volleyball team.

Fury erupted over car parking just last week at a Worcester meeting of the county watchdog cumbersomely known as the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee (HOSC). Councillor Penelope Morgan, a former midwife, told NHS bosses they should sort out parking and transport before they got to grips with anything else.

Successive NHS chief executives have squirmed under a barrage of sometimes venomous questions from councillors, public and patients fed-up with their inability to find a space. Even if by some miracle they find one, they can always have a further pop at the price they have to pay for the privilege (£3 for up to two hours; £4.50 for two to four hours; £6 for four to six hours; and £7.50 for six to 24 hours, if you’re curious).

When you’re sick you don’t generally want to be in the car park draped in unflattering pyjamas with one hand holding a drip and the other rooting around for small change to top up the meter. It doesn’t matter whether the chief executive of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust climbs into the proverbial pulpit to talk passionately about a new MRI scanner or care closer to home for cancer patients, the conversation will come right back round to parking and rightly so.

Conversations will travel in monotonous circles – like those dizzying and thoroughly infuriating circuits of the hospital’s one-way system while you look, in vain, for a space – until this is sorted out, once and for all.

Sometimes the situation can get utterly ridiculous. Returning to my car after a board meeting on one occasion I discovered a welldressed man whose car was literally stuck in the mud on the grass near the Charles Hastings Education Centre, not far from the main hospital building. It’s not like he chose to park in this Slough of Despond just to be awkward. He was forced to do so because there were no spaces.

Together with another good samaritan, I rolled up my sleeves and tried unsuccessfully to push him out. Meanwhile, a man I assumed must be the hospital groundkeeper pootled past on one of those laughable miniature tractors informing us, helpfully, that he would not hazard putting his back out to help anyone daft enough to park in a bog.

Then there’s the sometimes chaotic situation in Ronkswood, now something of an overspill car park for the hospital either because people can’t find a space or because they don’t want to pay.

Parking opposite a house in Canterbury Road, Ronkswood, I was greeted by an angry tirade of abuse from a man standing menacingly in his garden. It was difficult to hear what he was saying over the sound of his chainsaw but, needless to say, I hastily reconsidered my decision to park there.

There have been times when the whole estate has literally ground to a halt because buses can’t get between the rows of double-parked cars. The whole hospital sometimes seems like it’s at bursting point, conjuring up a mental image of Mr Creosote – the fat man from the Monty Python sketch who explodes after eating an after-dinner mint.

But if people keep on banging on about hospital car parking that’s because it’s so important and the problem has still not been resolved to their satisfaction.

It’s not as if hospital chiefs don’t take these complaints seriously or haven’t tried hard to do something about the problem. The car parking situation has improved dramatically if you look at the figures. Once the radiotherapy unit opens in 2014, the hospital will have 1,470 spaces, double the number it had when it opened in March 2002. Critics say it still isn’t anywhere near enough, especially when pressure on services from an elderly population is rising.

To take the cynical view, the trust has to save £50 million over the next three years as part of the joint services review which could mean certain services have to close. This in turn could free up space for further car parking.

There was even talk at one point of knocking down the now defunct Aconbury wing and using the land to build a multi-storey car park.

The problem is the hospital doesn’t really have anywhere to go.

It’s landlocked which means the hospital can’t expand beyond its existing boundaries. The hospital is a casualty of its own geography.

The NHS is also changing direction nationally which could provide another solution. Ideally, care should be provided closer to home or in community settings which takes pressure off main hospitals.

A good example is the Timberdine Nursing and Rehabilitation Unit in Worcester designed to help people recover from falls, orthopaedic surgery such as hip replacements, from strokes or complications due to diabetes. These people would once have been cared for at the hospital, only adding to the manic hustle and bustle. Such a shift helps spread the load of care and keep the hospital free for medical emergencies and specific, specialised procedures and operations.

More importantly it might mean you can at long last find a parking space. If you’re lucky.