Albury Wodonga Health is committed to working with neighbours of a temporary staff car park and has defended its planning processes.
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Albury councillors commented on Monday they felt pressured to approve the car park off East Street so the ED could go to a planning panel, indicating AWH had only initiated the car park plans after council staff raised an issue.
Albury Wodonga Health acting chief executive Janet Chapman said planning for parking had been ongoing.
"The new ED is not the only reason that we've been looking at additional car parking," she said.
"It is fortunate that it (the car park plan) was in place and we were already having those conversations, so that when council did raise their concerns with us about the impact of the ED on parking ... we were in a position to say, 'We've got this proposal ready to go'.
"We do need additional parking for staff ... we understand that the residents have got some concerns about traffic, noise and lights after-hours and they are legitimate concerns.
"We're very keen to talk to them about their concerns and we'll be looking at how we can provide that parking ... but also meet their concerns.
"We can consider how we might be able to make that a day only car park, for example."
Ms Chapman said AWH would love to have a multi-storey car park but didn't yet have the funding yet to build one.
"When we first looked at the emergency department, we included a multi-storey carpark in the original plans," she said.
"It's absolutely the way we'd like to go and we'll continue to lobby government to fund us for that."
A long-term solution for car parking will be addressed in the AWH master plan, yet to be released.
The importance of this was stressed by Albury Council in their submission to the Southern Regional Planning Panel, which was expected to give the green light to Albury's ED rebuild - a project that was first announced in 2017.
Ms Chapman, asked about the delays, said she understood why people would be questioning the planning process.
"It is frustrating - unfortunately, these things do take a very long time," she said.
"The allocation of $30 million is the first step of a very long process.
"All of that is done with the support of the Victorian Building Authority, who are actually the people managing this project.
"We would have loved it (the ED) to be there 12 or 18 months ago; the reality is, we will be starting this project pending the outcome of today's planning authority meeting.
"Once we get the green light ... we are ready to move ahead with announcing the building firm."
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Ms Chapman noted a pre-works package had already been completed.
"We have already completed the staff amenities, because we didn't want to just be wasting time while we were waiting for all of these administrative processes to happen," she said.
"We're getting handover of that facility I think in the next day or so ... I'm confident once we get the green light then we can start as soon as possible.
"Everyone I think is a little frustrated that it is taking a long time, but over that time what we've been able to do is do a fantastic design."