STAFF AND PATIENTS PAY MILLIONS TO PARK AT HOSPITALS
> CLAIRE MILLER & KATY HALLAM
DOCTORS, nurses and other hospital staff paid more than £1.5million to park their cars while working at Coventry and Rugby hospitals last year.
Meanwhile patients and visitors coughed up £4m to park at University Hospital Coventry and St Cross in Rugby in 2017/18, data from NHS Digital also revealed.
All the money from the Coventry hospital car parks goes to the private firm which operates it, while the hospital trust says money collected in Rugby is spent on maintaining the car parks.
It cost the staff who work at the two hospitals £1.66m to park while they were on shift including fines. The sum also includes income from parking permits, as well as Service Level Agreements with other NHS organisations for use of the trust’s car parking facilities.
Coventry’s University Hospital was the most expensive for parking out of all those in the region.
It cost patients and their visitors an average of £1.43 to park there for an hour, up from £1.37 in 2016/17.
At the other hospital run by the NHS Trust Hospital of St Cross patients and visitors were charged an average of 57p per hour, unchanged from 2016/17.
Both hospitals charged staff an average of 14p per hour to park. These costs also remained the same from 2016/17.
Back in April, the Trust announced it was increasing car parking charges at University Hospital Coventry for the second time in less than a year.
Parking for an hour was increased by 10p to £2.80, while parking for two hours saw a 20p jump to £3.90.
Those parking for six hours saw costs jump by 40p to £8.70.
Hospital bosses said it was a ‘difficult decision’ and cited ‘tougher financial pressures,’ saying it was no longer possible for visitor car parking to be subsidised out of its own budget.
A spokesman for University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) NHS Trust said: “UHCW NHS Trust does not make a profit from the car parks at University Hospital, which are maintained and operated through the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) provider.
“We work closely with our PFI partner to minimise the impact of these charges for patients, visitors and staff by providing a subsidy. Unfortunately any further subsidies would take money from budgets meant for patient care.
“Any money made from parking fees at the Hospital of St Cross is used for the running costs of the car parks and surrounding areas, for example lighting, security and any necessary maintenance costs.”
They added: “We will continue to support patients wherever we can by providing free parking for patients undergoing certain regular treatments such as intravenous chemotherapy or kidney dialysis.”
More than £6m of taxpayers’ cash has been paid in six years to the private company that runs the car park at Coventry’s University Hospital.
The sum has been paid by the hospital, on top of the cash the car park operator ISS (the Trust’s Private Finance Initiative provider) gets from car owners, as a subsidy to keep parking fees down and cover the cost of those allowed free parking.
This includes cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy or radiotherapy, dialysis patients and parents staying in overnight with sick children.
Last summer, we revealed that the hospital paid more than £670,000 to ISS in 2016/17 - and the full amount handed over since 2011 was £6,110,479.
At Royal Leamington Spa Hospital and Warwick Hospital, parking for patients and visitors cost an average of £1.57 per hour in 2017/18, and parking for staff averaged 14p per hour, the same as in 2016/17.
Costs to patients and visitors at Stratford Hospital actually reduced from an average of £1.57 per hour to £1.56 per hour, while charges for staff remained at 14p per hour.
Parking charges were an average of £1.17 per hour for patients and visitors at George Eliot Hospital in Nuneaton, and an average of 5p per hour for staff.
The cost for staff remained the same as in 2016/17, but charges for patients fell from £1.50 per hour.
A spokesman for South Warwickshire NHS Trust said: “The Trust’s car parking charges are in line with the national travel cost scheme, which states that the only exemption to car parking charges is for patients who are on means tested benefits.
“This is consistent with other public sites. If blue badge holders are on means-tested benefits they can claim these costs back.
“The Trust do not aim to make a profit from car parks and all income is reinvested to ensure that they remain safe and secure.
“Without charging, necessary maintenance work would have to be funded by the Trust, impacting on the money which is available for direct patient care.
“We have recently been exploring options to create additional car parking capacity at Warwick Hospital. The plans are not definite yet, but the Trust intends to make a significant capital investment to help improve accessibility for our services and support patient experience.”
George Eliot HospitalParking for patients and visitors at George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust brought in £732,980 and staff parking brought in £191,854, but the cost to the Trust after income was taken into account was £883,007.
Overall, South Warwickshire NHS Trust saw a gross income of £1m from patient and visitor parking, and £448,889 from staff parking.
All of the hospitals in the area charged for disabled parking last year.
Unite regional officer Zoe Mayou said: “It is a scandal that staff have been used as a milch cow - to the tune of more than £2.1m from parking charges in the last financial year.
“Serious questions need to be asked if this level is not completely excessive.
“This is an outrageous
and unscrupulous ‘tax on work’ for those health staff who come into work 365 days a year to look after the sick, injured and vulnerable.
“I think that the residents of Coventry and Warwickshire will be appalled at the way that dedicated and often low paid staff are being used as an additional income stream by the bosses of these two trusts.
“The government continues to underfund the NHS as demand from a growing population increases, especially amongst the elderly and this means that trusts are casting around to gain extra income, but it should not be at the expense of their own workforce.
“Recently, the health unions secured a pay deal for NHS staff which will see most staff receive a rise of 6.5 per cent over the next three years. You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to work out that car parking charges will seriously erode that pay increase.
“Unite’s policy is that NHS staff in England should not pay to park their cars at work - and we will continue to campaign strongly.”
NHS Trusts across England saw a gross income of £156.8m in 2017/18 from parking for patients and visitors, and £69.5m from parking for staff. Overall trusts across the country made £29.8m in profits after the costs of providing parking services were taken into account.