What expenses are disability benefits mean to cover?

Morglin

Free hospital parking is not extended to ALL disability claimants - I assume you would have to be on a means-tested benefit.

We have to pay to park our car at the hospital, even though we have a BB.

Lin

sophers

I just want to add that as well as my blue badge i am also on income support as i cannot physically work, and if i had to pay for parking when i attended hospital appointments then i just would not be able to afford parking and therefor would have to miss my appointments!

I do think everyone should get free parking for hospital appointments, as people cannot usually help being ill.

thanks

sophers

id also like to add that when you have a baby you should not have to pay for parking when your partner/family is visiting.

and that i dont think people should have to pay to park while visiting a sick relative or friend, it is important for people to have visitors while in hospital and i should imagine that parking charges put some people off coming to visit!

gregg1

Mistyang wrote: »

I work at the local hospital and at present it is free parking for disabled badge holders, others abusing the disabled spots receive a parking fine notice from the Parking attendant.

As members of staff if we want to park in the hospital grounds we have £14 a month deducted from our wages...no perks of the jobs for us NHS staff!!!!!

I would say that a huge percentage of people who work have to pay for parking. I really do not think that £14 a month is an awful lot compared to the figures a lot of folk have to pay. Thats less than £1 per day.

I have just added up the amount I have paid in hospital parking over the last five weeks and it comes to well over £120! I would welcome a £1 per day charge!

Garnet_Gem

If I was unfortunate enough to be granted DLA I hope I would view it as a way to make life easier for me with my disablity. I would spend the money on hospital parking charges, a cleaner and a gardener and anything else that I would need to help me lead a better life. Our local hospital doesn't charge so the car park is full by 8:30am. One of the staff told me that at least 50 percent of the cars belong to people who work in the town and don't have any reason to use the car park other than it's free all day for them.

bestpud

That's the one good thing to come out of charging at my local hospital - you can at least find a space now! Plus, they were having lots of people turn up late for appts because they couldn't find a space, thus wasting clinical time and ultimately increasing waiting lists.

However, I think patients should be allowed free parking, especially for ongoing illnesses/treatment. This should be regardless of income, disability or anything else. As already said, they should be sent tickets with appts or given them as they make the next appt, and limiting them to a day would prevent abuse.

I don't know about visiting though - parents should definitely not have to pay when they are staying at the hospital with their child, nor parents with babies in SCBU, and neither should people who have family/friends who are critically ill or in ITU etc. In these circumstances, visitors can be around for days and it seems unfair to be hit them with massive charges on top of everything else. I'm not sure it's unreasonable to charge general visitors though, so long as it's not excessive. Perhaps relatively cheap for an hour, or hour and a half, and rising steeply after that to prevent people taking a walk into town after, or before, visiting!

I really do think the hospitals just don't want to be bothered with it though. They just want to pay a flat rate to some firm and get them to sort it any way they like!!!

klondyke

bestpud wrote: »

I really do think the hospitals just don't want to be bothered with it though. They just want to pay a flat rate to some firm and get them to sort it any way they like!!!

Not always hospital's fault - at our local hospital, and presumably many others, it's down to this wretched Public Private Partnership thingie - ie imposed on them.

Morglin

The parking charges are not as bad as the Patientline TV and phone "service".

That really is extortion.:mad:

Public phones and day room TV's have been removed from most wards in our local hopsital, so a patient has no option other than to use the Patientline service.

If you phone a patient you have to listen to about 2 minutes of waffle, and then it costs a bomb per minute.

Lin

bestpud

klondyke wrote: »

Not always hospital's fault - at our local hospital, and presumably many others, it's down to this wretched Public Private Partnership thingie - ie imposed on them.

Hmmm, I hadn't thought of that, good point! I'm sure individual hospitals/PCTs must be able to influence the service offered by private parking firms though?

In our hospital, outpatient clinics in particular were struggling due to the previous lack of parking spaces, so the hospital itself would probably prefer to leave the charges in place. I guess it's altogether easier to just hand the service over completely and wipe their hands of it, rather than work with the parking company to ensure a fair service.

I'm sure there must be a better way to prevent abuse and yet allow patients to park for free.

bestpud

Morglin wrote: »

The parking charges are not as bad as the Patientline TV and phone "service".

That really is extortion.:mad:

Public phones and day room TV's have been removed from most wards in our local hopsital, so a patient has no option other than to use the Patientline service.

If you phone a patient you have to listen to about 2 minutes of waffle, and then it costs a bomb per minute.

Lin

I have a feeling this is being looked into isn't it? I agree, the charges are way too high for these services.