Express & Star Comment: We’re sick of charges for parking at hospitals
It is difficult to avoid cynicism over the cost of parking at hospitals when you hear the trusts raked in a eye-watering £174 million from charges.
Quite understandably the cynics suggest that NHS trusts are taxing the sick and vulnerable with 'extortionate car parking fees.'
Some might even think that the trusts are milking patients and their visitors as easy prey who, in often distressing circumstances, may have no alternative but to pay up.
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Those who try to avoid the charges, if able to make the walk to the hospital, often create misery for nearby residents by clogging up surrounding roads.
Anger at the charges and hospital parking issues understandable.
While parking in Scotland and Wales is predominantly free, trusts across England are raking in multi millions thanks to those who have the misfortune to be ill or injured. Often the money raised is simply filling the coffers of private parking firms.
Here in the West Midlands one trust, the Heart of England NHS foundation, collected almost £5m from car parking fees in just one year.
Some hospitals defend their revenues saying the money is spent on maintaining car parks, the grounds or sometimes put back into patient care. We can accept that there will be some expense in offering parking on site.
But just think how much landscaping £5m will buy you! Do these hospitals have the gardens of stately homes?
Almost daily we hear distressing stories of ridiculously long waits in our hospitals, mistakes being made and trusts failing to meet national targets. In our pages today we reveal how one patient with chest pains had to wait for an hour and a half to be dealt with at Walsall Manor.
So not only are the sick and elderly and their families forced to fork out substantial sums for parking - at one trust in Guildford it is £4 an hour - but they can often expect to be there for some time as they join the throngs waiting for treatment.
Surely car parking charges should be kept to a minimum just to cover costs and not be a greedy, insensitive financial burden on the sick. Or are the cynics right?
