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Hospital parking rakes in millions
Friday 27th February 2009, 3:00PM GMT.
Hospitals in England are raking in more than £110 million a year from car parking charges, new official figures show.
Patients and their family and friends are paying more than £83 million in fees – while staff are also being hit for £27 million.
Three NHS trusts made more than £2 million from visitors fees alone in 2007/08, according to the figures released by the Department of Health.
The figure for the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust was £684,566.
Charges were introduced at the Royal Shrewsbury more than 10 years ago, initially to raise cash for maternity services. They were later introduced at Telford’s Princess Royal.
A trust spokesman said today: “Our hospital car parking charges are a maximum of £2 per day.
“We also have a wide range of concessions to support people on low incomes or people who are on treatment plans that require regular visits to hospital.”
A £1 charge was first introduced at Oswestry’s Orthopaedic Hospital in 2004, but is also now £2. Last year it raised £136,000.
Some 37 trusts raised more than £1 million from parking charges.
They included Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which made a total of £2.7 million.
The highest average hourly charge for visitors was £3.20 at Worthing & Southlands Hospitals NHS Trust in Sussex.
The figures were released in response to parliamentary questions.
Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said: “Hospitals have a responsibility to provide affordable parking and good transport to and from the hospital.
“If parking charges are damaging patients’ access to services, stopping their friends and relatives from visiting or impeding staff from doing their job properly then they’re clearly too high.
“It’s evidence of the Government’s waste and ‘boom and bust’ approach to the NHS finances that some hospitals are still having to rely on the revenue from these charges when Labour have more than doubled spending on health since 1997.”
But a Department of Health spokesman ruled out a move to free parking, as has happened in Scotland.
By Dave Morris
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this is a good thing it means we have to pay lower taxes
well done hospital bosses for reducing my tax and reducing congestion and greenhouse gases too
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Its another stealth tax!
so much tax so much dross!!!
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You wouldnt mind but parking at the PRH is a total nightmare – 45mins to get a space yesterday and only just made my appointment. They could you the cash to put in more parking spaces were possible
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Jenny I have to disagree.
The reason for these parking fees are not to reduce your taxes at all. More Likely it will be used to pay big fat bonuses to the Executives who do so little to earn them. They should be used to pay the doctors and nurses more. But if they cut the wages of the executives to more realistic figures the fees would not be needed.
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Jenny, grow up and think for yourself.
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“this is a good thing it means we pay lower taxes”
I don’t know where Jenny has been living for the last eleven years,but I certainly have not found that to be the case here in England.
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shame on the loony left for taxing the sick, the conservatives will stop this, and cut your taxes too, so get labour out for the sake of the NHS which we will make better and more to the point for the efficiency, and lower taxes
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i think this is a good part of a sustainable travel plan which includes imprived better bus routes to the hospital and incentives for staff to use green travel to avoid congestion, we need more of this, its a good thing despite being unpopular with some daily mail reading vocal minority
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i agree, the visitors and staff should pay to park but the ill people and ambulances should not, that would seem fair but the staff should pay like i do to get to work – how else can you control parking here, theres a finite amount of space and we need to encourage less polluting ways of travel, i’d like to see the bus links improved here too
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i dont mind paying to park provided its used on medical care
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I suspect Paullo you have not needed hospital facilities recently. I could never rely on the bus service if I actually had an appointment to make as they are so often late it’s ridiculous. It also costs more on the bus than the parking so where is the incentive there?!
Often people are too ill or incapacitated to use public transport and it is these people who are disadvantaged the most, visiting the hospital regularly means the charges really rack up.
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id rather parking charges than higher taxes
it has to be funded some how, at least this way the main users pay as opposed to the taxpayer at large
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with such a captive audience, i am surprised no one has organised a 24 hour car boot sale in aid of hospital funds or any one’s funds
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How do the complainants suggest they replace the huge income from car parking???????
£684,566 / 45000 households means we could all volunteer to pay £15.21 per annum extra tax so that the staff at the hospital can park for free!
Any volunteers, please would whoever would like to be £15 per annum worse off please stand up and show themselves, i would love to see you all volunteer to pay more tax
No, well stop moaning when the public sector comes up with innovative charging mechanisms to reduce the tax burden then
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I don’t believe very much of the parking charges at the PRH go into hospital coffers anyway.
Having had the experience some years ago of having to follow an ambulance late at night to the A&E department, when my then very young child suffered a febrile convulsion, only to find that my first priority upon arrival had to be to find some change to get a car park ticket, I couldn’t ehlp but think their priorities were a little wrong.
As for using the bus, it’s hard enough to get time off work for hospital appointments – I doubt if my employer would approve of waiting for me to undertake a meandering hour-long bus journey each way to replace a car journey of no more than 15 minutes each way. Public transport simply isn’t a viable alternative unless you’ve got half a day to waste on it.
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you cant use public transport if your ill/cripple
i think parking fees are fine, but they should be capped and refundable for regular users, eg collecting a prescription once a week
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it should be free for all
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Phil Davies @ 4,
you want t pay doctors more????
do you do how much Drs earn?
average GP earns well over £120,000 p.a.
average consultant earns well over £175,000 p.a. from NHS work and supplements that with huge earnings from private patient work at the Nuffield and similar private hospitals.
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