IT seems ridiculous that a doctor due to begin work at Blackburn Royal Infirmary should be clamped for leaving his car in an unmarked bay after driving round for 25 minutes looking for a staff parking spot.

In the high-pressure world of hospitals the last thing a professional medic needs is to begin his or her day with such a stressful scenario.

The hospital readily admits there is not enough parking for staff on the hospital site.

And in the streets outside residents-only parking schemes operate and anyone else caught leaving a car faces the prospect of a fine.

The situation will be quite different when services complete the move to the new Queen's Park Hospital but that is two years away.

But in the meantime, a hospital spokesman says a shuttle bus service has been put in place to ferry staff to and from Queen's Park where there is plenty of room to find parking spaces.

That shuttle service should be made as regular and efficient as those operating in, for example, the car parks at Manchester airport so that waiting time is minimal.

Then there would be no reason for anyone to have to waste time and experience frayed nerves jostling for somewhere to park on the Blackburn Infirmary site.