STALLED plans to increase car parking at York Hospital have been put in motion again, after a new temporary staff car parking scheme was submitted to City of York Council.

Even local residents who objected to the original application have said they would support the new scheme, and commended York Hospitals NHS Trust for listening to the views of local people.

Councillors last month agreed to plans to build a two-storey car park on the York Hospital site in Wigginton Road, on the condition that suitable temporary staff parking was also created for the construction period.

However, at the same meeting on August 28, an accompanying application to transform disused tennis courts near the entrance gates on the nearby Bootham Park Hospital site into a temporary 158-space staff car park was deferred, following strong objections from local residents.

Objectors feared that traffic would be increased in Bootham and the character of the listed hospital building would be compromised.

As well as 69 letters of objection from residents, the York Conservation Trust and the Georgian Group also objected to the proposal.

Danny Morgan, director of facilities at York Hospital NHS Trust, said a new site behind an old chapel building - now used as the clinical psychology headquarters - had been identified on the Bootham Park Hospital site which answered many of the critics' concerns.

The site, the subject of a new planning application, would be slightly smaller than the disused tennis courts, he said, and access would be from Union Terrace, rather than Bootham.

Mr Morgan said: "We've tried hard to take into account all the objections. The best scheme we could come up with was turned down - this is the second best.

"If this goes to plan and is agreed by the second week of October then we would have lost no time."

Local resident David Nicholson said: "This looks as though the trust has listened to the fair-minded objections and acted with some understanding.

"We are very pleased and if it is the site we believe it to be then it is likely we will support it."

Updated: 14:50 Friday, September 12, 2003