Unless you’re lucky enough to get one of the handful of spaces in its minuscule car park, where exactly are you supposed to park if you’re visiting a patient at Bradford Royal Infirmary ?

For a hospital that size, the car park is woefully inadequate. I know going to a hospital isn’t top on anyone’s list of favourite things to do, but the main reason I dread the BRI is because of its appalling substandard parking facilities.

I went one evening last week to visit a relative. I drove gingerly around the annoyingly-twisty, turny car park twice and there wasn’t a single space free. Well, there was one – but it was half occupied by a car parked across two spaces. Don’t you hate it when people do that?

I ventured out to the main road, with double yellow lines on either side, and found a hilly side street which, right at the bottom, had some space to park. I had to drop my dad off at the top of the street since it was too steep for him to walk up.

There were no yellow lines and no parking meter and, since it was well after 6pm, I thought it’d be fine to leave the car there for an hour.

I trekked up the hill and across the busy road to the hospital entrance. Just under an hour later, I returned to my car – to discover a £70 parking fine taped to the windscreen. Already tired after a day at work, stressed from visiting a sick relative, and irritated at having to drive around for ages before I could finally experience the luxury of parking, I could have wept.

“Seventy pounds!” I wailed, clutching my temples. I’d just paid around £70 to have my passport renewed. Another £70 will seriously dent my finances for the rest of the month.

All I’d done was park on a virtually empty side street, so I could visit someone in a hospital with a ridiculously inadequate car park, but I felt as if I was being punished. If there’d been a parking meter I’d have paid to leave my car, but there wasn’t.

I was left thinking – exactly where are you supposed to park if you’re a hospital visitor or an out-patient? Whenever I go to the BRI, I can almost guarantee the car park will be full and I’ll have to drive around surrounding streets like a heat-seeking missile.

If space is limited, surely a park-and-ride system wouldn’t be too much to organise. Until a solution is found, hospital visitors, and users, will continue to feel like second-class citizens.