Nurses facing ruin over £13m hospital car parking fines
HOSPITAL staff are facing financial ruin after losing a court battle with a controversial private parking firm over fines.
Nurses, doctors and carers at University Hospital of Wales (UHW) in Cardiff have racked up penalty charges of nearly £13million from car parks operator Indigo.
They claim there simply are not enough spaces at the hospital, which is one of the biggest in the UK. They have received tickets when their shifts run over the parking limit while others say they have had to simply abandon their cars or risk being late for work.
One member of staff was ticketed even though a sign on their car read ‘Cardiac emergency – nurse on call’, while a carer quit his job after racking up 28 parking tickets in four months.
Some staff have been refusing to pay the fines, arguing they are unfair. But on Friday, a judge ruled in the parking firm’s favour in three lead cases, making workers liable to pay £128 for each ticket they have received.
The result is also binding on 72 other cases, leaving them with a bill of £39,000 plus £26,000 in legal costs.
The group fear Indigo will now pursue other fines, of which more than 100,000 have been issued since April last year. Some staff have hundreds each. It means that if Indigo enforces the £128-a-ticket fine, the amount would total £12.8million.
One nurse, who wished to remain anonymous, said: ‘I am a single parent. I had to move back to live with my parents due to financial difficulties. How are we supposed to do our jobs properly if we are constantly worrying about these extortionate car parking fees?
‘I have no idea how I will pay and am distressed beyond belief.’
Around 8,500 staff have been issued with parking permits, which allow them to park in desig- nated areas for £1.05 a day, but employees claim a lack of spaces means they have been forced to park in unauthorised areas or do not have enough time to find spaces and pay the visitors’ daily £8.80 parking charge.
A community nurse who works out of the hospital said: ‘The parking is diabolical – unless you arrive early in the morning it’s a nightmare trying to find a space – and it is even worse in term time when medical students add to the problem.’
The top floor of a multi- storey car park at the sprawling hospital site is reserved for staff but the nurse, who asked not to be identified, said hospital visitors regularly parked there because spaces were in such short supply. The hospital in Cardiff is used by 15,000 people a day plus staff but has only 1,842 parking spaces on site.
The ruling by District Judge Clare Coates came on Friday after a three-day hearing at Cardiff Civil Justice Centre. The case involved three workers, Stephen Dadswell, Emily Booth and Sophie Round, who Indigo say have each racked up more than 100 parking tickets.
But the three NHS workers are part of a larger group of staff with unpaid tickets – and the hearing was seen as a test case for others who have failed to pay.
The staff were represented by parking campaigner Barry Beavis, a chip shop owner from Billericay, Essex. He said: ‘Some people have got hundreds and hundreds of tickets – we are talking about lifechanging amounts of money. It is not an exaggeration so say peo- ple’s homes, their livelihoods, everything they have worked for is at risk simply because they parked in the wrong car park.’
A spokesman for Indigo said it acted against a ‘small group of persistent offenders’ with the full support of the health board.
Cardiff and Vale University Health Board said it was ‘disappointing’ a small number of staff refused to co-operate with parking rules. In 2015, it urged staff to pay any parking fines, saying they had been correctly issued.
‘I have no idea how I will pay’