Hospital parking profits leap but it still axes free disabled spaces
A HOSPITAL trust has admitted its profits from car parking soared before it axed free disabled spaces.
Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust hiked parking fees by 55% in 2016 and then started charging Blue Badge holders last July.
Now bosses have revealed in the 2016/17 financial year its car parks made £1.66million – up £400,000 on 2015/16. The trust, which runs Blackpool’s main Victoria Hospital, has been blasted by critics.
Derek Hudson, a local councillor, said: “The board should completely reconsider because they are attacking the most vulnerable in society.”
Gordon Marsden, Blackpool South Labour MP, said: “We all know trusts are under extreme pressure. Nevertheless, these increases are extremely steep.”
But trust deputy chief execu- tive Tim Bennett insisted its charges were “in line with the majority of other hospitals”.
He added: “All money collected from car parking goes back into patient care.”
The Mirror is campaigning for NHS hospital car parking charges to be axed, and more than 15,000 people have already signed our online petition.
Rachel Power, of the Patients Association, described parking fees as “an extra charge for being ill”, adding: “The increase in the number of trusts charging for disabled parking is particularly concerning.”
Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth vowed: “Labour will abolish car parking charges and scrap this needless strain on already worried families.”
Sign our petition online at: mirror.co.uk/hospitalparking.
CHARGING the disabled to go to hospital is against the spirit of a free NHS.
Bosses should hang their heads in shame at Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust for ending free parking for Blue Badge holders. Slapping a tax on the sick is contemptible and it is unacceptable that hospitals in England charge to park when it is mainly free in Wales and Scotland.
Public anger is mounting in England as the Mirror campaigns to make parking free for patients, visitors and staff. We’ve tapped into a widespread, justifiable social grievance.
The big winners nationally aren’t hospitals. They’re private companies making an unhealthy profit out of illness. Let’s end this car park-charging scandal. Now.