Scrap car parking charges at NHS Hospitals in England
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JJ_Egan
Posts: 20,281 Forumite
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/219650
Hospital car parking charges affect the vulnerable, visitors of ill relatives and hard working NHS staff. The fees are a major cause of social injustice.
Join the campaign to get this stealth tax scrapped, once and for all.
Hospital car parking charges affect the vulnerable, visitors of ill relatives and hard working NHS staff. The fees are a major cause of social injustice.
Join the campaign to get this stealth tax scrapped, once and for all.
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Comments
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Which budget should NHS car park maintenance etc come from then?I am not a cat (But my friend is)0
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I think nobody minds paying, just not the exhorbitant prices they charge + the utter fear of the clampers/finers if you "broke a rule" you hadn't spotted in your urgency to get inside the building for your purposes.
£2/visit would be a nice flat rate that could be tolerated by most in the short-term. Simple barrier, £2 in the slot to get out.... job done.
Also, parking to get in is often inadequate.... I was trying to drop off a terminal patient (2 weeks before they died) and 86 year old wife with dementia.... and the closest I could get to the clinic they needed to be at was to illegally pull up at the door, get them out, then leave them on the side of the entrance hoping the dementia one wouldn't wander off ... while I drove 400 yards to a parking area, parked and ran back, to take them inside, get them sat down and announce our arrival.
I had to run the risk of a fine to drop them off as they couldn't have walked from the car park and I could have only fireman's lifted the smaller one... who might have then wandered off while I went back with a sack barrow to get the heavier one back to the same spot.0 -
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Much as I would like NHS car parks to be free, if they were they would be full of staff cars who now park in nearby streets.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]What I would like banned are those which charge by the hour on entry rather than on exit. You have no idea how long your appointment might take, so I always end up overpaying.[/FONT]0 -
i think it should be free for patients and visitors with a valid pass for a set time0
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Medway maritime hospital runs theirs in house , it's charges are reasonable , it pays for ongoing maintenance of the parking areas and the surplus is spent in the hospital. They cannot be free as otherwise the maintenance charges come out of NHS budget . It's up to each trust to decide who gets a free pass .
Staff have separate area's they must park in
I think they should be banned from outsourcing it to scam parking companies who have a vested interest in charging people a "penalty" (not a fine) for imagined rule breaking or overstays and raising the per hour chargesEx forum ambassador
Long term forum member0 -
Which budget should NHS car park maintenance etc come from then?
Its not just a matter of budget - As Browntoa alludes to above, some hospitals can manage to run their car parks effectively, efficiently and in a cost-effective manner without exorbitant charges and overly restrictive rules/T&Cs or contracting-in private parking vultures - who ultimately do nothing to manage parking as it is not in their financial self-interest to do so.
Another issue is that many hospitals let themselves down by completely ignoring (or letting their contractors ignore) the NHS's own guidelines on operating car parks. We see instances of this pretty-much daily on the parking board - where you can find a great many examples and links to the guidelines. People regularly get tickets cancelled by PALS at the same hospitals for this or win appeals at POPLA because of it but the way these operations work but a far greater number of people must be being scared/browbeaten into paying. Which in a hospital scenario is really not-on!0 -
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]There is a small NHS hospital near to me which I often have to attend and the car park is free.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]However the car park is always full because staff park there and you can only ever get a space in the late afternoon when part time staff leave so I end up having to find a space in the crowded and yellow lined roads nearby.[/FONT]0 -
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]There is a small NHS hospital near to me which I often have to attend and the car park is free.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]However the car park is always full because staff park there and you can only ever get a space in the late afternoon when part time staff leave so I end up having to find a space in the crowded and yellow lined roads nearby.[/FONT]
Free parking (or free anything else) is usually popular.
(Text removed by MSE Forum Team)0 -
Living close to the English/Welsh border I have the choice of acute hospitals in both countries.
You won't get a parking spot at the Welsh hospital after 08:30 where the parking is free. Staff have got their own areas. People tend to park anywhere they can fit a car because there is no enforcement whatsoever.
That is the downside of having no parking control
The English one has a £3 per visit charge. Car parks controlled by exit barriers where you have to buy a token in the hospital to operate the barriers. All parking is sensible. Spaces normally available and no cars abandoned (for want of a better word) in inappropriate places.0 -
Parking at our local hospital used to be free but charges had to be introduced to stop shoppers parking there all day and walking into town (less than 5 mins walk).
As someone else has already said, selfish b******s.0
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