Ex-health chief hits out at hospital parking hike

Hard-up pensioners, low income earners and people living in rural areas will be among the hardest hit by plans to double the cost of parking at the county’s two main hospitals, an ex-health boss has warned.

David Sandbach, former chief executive at Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital, has launched an attack on Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust’s plans to introduce a new pay-on-exit system at the PRH and Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.

He said that the founders of the NHS ‘would turn in their graves’ at the proposals which could see rates go up to £4, describing them as ‘an amoral assault on ordinary citizens’.

Under the proposals, new hourly charges would replace the current £2 all-day rate, costing £4 for up to five hours and beyond.

Mr Sandbach said: “It is, in my opinion, planning to abuse its monopoly power by inflating beyond reason or economic justification its pricing structure for car parking at RSH and PRH.

“This gross abuse of administrative and monopoly power is an amoral assault on ordinary citizens in the community who are finding life difficult during the worst recession since the 1930s.

“The disproportionate burden of the proposed hike in car parking charges will fall mainly on three groups of people – rural members of the community who are the bulk of the patients attending RSH, urban and rural citizens on low incomes and urban and rural senior citizens on low or very modest fixed incomes and pensions.

“I am sure the founding fathers of the NHS who created it in June 1948 would turn in their graves if they knew that the people who are now in charge could even contemplate treating their fellow citizens in such a way.”

A spokesman for the trust said: “Over the last five years we have worked hard to maintain our car parking charges, but this cannot continue without having an impact on our other services and facilities.”