Long-awaited car park open at Wolverhampton's New Cross Hospital

Staff and patients have long complained about a lack of space at New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton.

But the creation of a new £4 million multi-storey car park has finally relieved pressure on the site.

The first three levels of the five-storey structure opened this week, with around 300 spaces immediately made available.

The two upper floors will soon follow, meaning a total of 527 spaces.

The car park has being built in a bid to cope with increasing visitor numbers and to stop nearby roads from getting clogged.

Residents in Wednesfield have long complained of patients and staff blocking streets.

Pete Gibbons, head of commercial services at The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust, said: "The new multi-storey car park partially opened as planned, with the remaining upper floors to follow soon.

"Our efforts to improve parking facilities for patients and visitors has also included minor work on the East Car Park to create an extra 35 spaces for public parking, which opened last week."

Trust chief executive David Loughton slammed his own staff last year as it emerged that 500 staff were travelling less than 1km to work each day. Mr Loughton, who uses public transport to commute to New Cross every day, also branded the car park as a 'waste of money'. He said staff living close to the site should also use public transport.

In 2012 charges were increased by 50 per cent to £2 an hour and free parking for disabled users was scrapped for the first time,and with that the trust which runs the hospital was flooded with complaints against the new fees. And in August last year a 20p price hike was added to the charge, with bosses pledging that the extra money would be ploughed into maintenance and security costs at the hospital. The new car park was originally designed to hold 250 cars, but that was more than doubled to compensate for the loss of spaces when the new A&E unit is built.