HOSPITAL bosses hoping for a speedy solution to a long-running car park wrangle say they are "desperate" for work to swing into action.

Gridlock around York Hospital is creating a "nightmare" for patients caught in traffic chaos, health chiefs claim.

Plans for a new two-storey hospital car park have already been provisionally agreed by City of York Council. But rows over where temporary staff parking will be based during construction have prevented permission being rubber-stamped.

Proposals to site 160 cars on tennis courts near Bootham Park Hospital were deferred after residents objected. Now a new site for 90 staff spaces off Wigginton Road has been tabled, alongside an existing alternative application for 63 spaces behind Bootham Hospital Chapel.

York Hospital facilities director Danny Morgan said: "We're desperate to get all this sorted out.

"Car parking has to be improved at the hospital. Every day we have dozens of patients queuing in cars on Wigginton Road.

"It's an absolute nightmare.

"We have to help them find spaces and this new car park is the only way." Mr Morgan said although health chiefs backed the council's bid to curb city centre congestion, the hospital had to be treated flexibly.

"Nobody wants to come to hospital. They are anxious people, ill people. They are bringing loved ones here and dying relatives.

"Hospitals are different and can't be ruled by environmentally-driven objectives.

"We have to show compassion. We are helping make sick people better and if that conflicts with some peripheral areas of transport planning, then so be it."

He said more than 15 per cent of hospital staff regularly use bikes to get to work. Green-friendly plans have been submitted for permission to build more secure "cycle lockers" in the hospital grounds.

However, residents in Union Terrace, near Bootham Park Hospital, are opposed to the new plans, which they say will create extra traffic and access problems.

David Wilson told the Evening Press last month: "Residents are not happy about this at all."

"When work on the new car park - which could take up to a year - finally starts, patients will use staff parking at the hospital. Workers will move to the temporary sites."

The applications for temporary parking spaces at the Nestl Old Stables, Wigginton Road, and near Bootham Hospital Chapel, are due to go before planners on December 15.

Updated: 08:38 Thursday, October 23, 2003