Letter: Where does parking fee money go?
Tuesday 15th June 2010, 7:45AM BST.
Letter: Have you ever wondered why car parking charges are so high in municipal car parks? I can understand private car parks charging a high fee, they do so to make a profit and as it’s their land it’s their right to do so.
As a car owner you pay for a road licence which goes to build and maintain roads and motorways. Your £160 fee works out at just over 1.8 pence per hour which enables you to keep your car on the road for all 8,760 hours there are in each year.
For that 1.8 pence per hour your roads are maintained, swept, have road signs, traffic lights and even those nice men and women in cars with blue lights on the top to help you out when you inadvertently go too fast. Along with all the other emergency services at your call each and every hour it’s pretty good value for money.
Why then are car parks owned by us, like hospital car parks, charging us so much money to park our cars when we go to visit people that are ill, or to transport them to and from the hospital’s for treatment?
Surly the cost of the car parks, which we have already paid for, should be more in line with our road network charges? They are, after all, provided far less in terms of a service.
Michael Wilkinson
Ketley
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Here in Shropshire we’re very lucky to have the current level of charges for hospital car parking. A mere £2 for up to 24 hours stay. Much cheaper than travelling there by bus, train or taxi and a drop in the ocean against the cost of treatment received at the hospital.
My husband recently attended an appointment at Addenbrookes, Cambridge. The 4 hour stay in the car park came to over £9. This makes the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital parking charges seem really quite reasonable.
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Michael, you asked,
”Why then are car parks owned by us, like hospital car parks, charging us so much money to park our cars when we go to visit people that are ill, or to transport them to and from the hospital’s for treatment?”
I will tell you why.
Because the people that make these decisions know full well that people will write to newspapers and moan but won’t actually DO ANYTHING about it.
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Hear, hear. If hospital parking charges were reasonable, for example 20p per 30 minutes and the eventual profit was for the benefit of the NHS Trust, there would be no argument, but common sense formed no part of the introduction of hospital parking fees. They were political and crass. In Telford, the Chair of the Trust was a senior figure within the Labour controlled council which wanted parking charges introduced in the Town Centre in order that it could introduce charges in council car parks elsewhere. This aim was also part of the central (Labour) government thrust to raise more revenue through the “green” smokescreen of encouraging people to use their cars less. We will never know the truth, but there was undoubtedly a lot of arm twisting because Telford Centre management had always maintained that they wished to keep free parking to make them more competitive than Shrewsbury and Wolverhampton. At the PRH, I understand the contractor achieved an unbelievably lucrative contract and whoever negotiated such a poor deal should be deeply ashamed – as should those who supported it. The £2 fee for a numbered vehicle and no change given is Sheriff of Nottingham stuff. It’s just greedy and tyrannical – and very unwelcome when patients have their relatives often have very much more pressing concerns to deal with. Hospital parking charges are an obscenity which must be righted – soon!
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The telford town center car parks are privately owned and are nit under the council banner, they took it upon themselves to introduce charges the council nor previous goverment told them too, and we have had Tory controlled council for around 1 year now, and the parking charges still apply.
Likewise the hospital carparks are now privately owned nothing to do with the councils.
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Charging for car parking is to make money. The more money is made, the easier it is to balance the books.
Carparking money made, can be used for anything the council likes, unlike on street parking where it can only be used for transport items, (or so they say).
It works like this.
Councils need to balance the budget, the easier that can be achieved, the less pressure there is on them to look at other ways of saving money.
How many people have wondered whether or not spending 4 or 5 million on a project is actually what the project is costing and not just to finance the project but to leave a tidy sum for profit sharing? Not many I guess.
I remember a project near where I live, costing over £300,00 to re-roof and replace the plumbing inside. It was not as big as a bungalow, it would have been cheaper to knock it down and start over and would have been cheaper.
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