Hospitals to offer complimentary parking during festive period

Medical facilities within a city are set to waive parking fees throughout the Christmas season. Visitors attending patients at Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, and Peterborough City Hospital will be granted complimentary parking on Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and New Year’s Day. Joanne Bennis, who serves as the chief nurse for the North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust, the organization managing these hospitals, stated that the trust “wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to visit over Christmas”. This initiative comes after the trust’s earlier decision to prolong visiting hours across its hospitals, changing them from 11:00 GMT to 20:00 GMT. Ms Bennis remarked: “Our ward teams do a great job in making Christmas in hospital as festive as possible for our patients, but there is nothing quite like seeing their loved ones to give our patients a lift.” She continued: “We wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to visit over Christmas and this comes on the back of our recent extension to visiting hours from 11:00 to 20:00 as standard across most wards, which will continue.” Additionally, she advised: “I would, however, like to remind people not to visit hospital if they are unwell themselves. “This helps us protect our patients from viruses such as flu and norovirus, which are much more easily spread at this time of year.”