Nurses call for action over £20 hospital car park fees

NURSES have launched a campaign against ‘unfair’ hospital car parking fees that can see them charged up to £20 a day to attend work.

The NHS workers have set up an online petition calling for the levy to be lowered and it has already gathered more than 11,000 signatures.

The multi-storey car park at Glasgow Royal Infirmary is locked into a PFI arrangement which means the private firm that owns the facility does not offer free parking, like many NHS hospitals.

The Scottish Government says it wants the charges to be ‘abolished’.

The car park’s night rate is capped at £3.20 but its hourly day rate is £1.70, with no cap. That means nurses, who often work 12-hour shifts, have to pay around £20 a day.

Parking fees at Scottish NHS car parks were scrapped in 2008, but PFI hospitals

‘Unfair that staff have to pay so much’

are exempt from the arrangements. Nurse Shelley McCahon, who started the online petition, wrote: ‘I am aware that we are not likely to get free parking, therefore I wish to campaign for a standard £5 flat rate.’

The car park was built under a PFI deal signed in 2005 and lasting until 2035.

Anne Thomson, a senior officer for the Royal College of Nursing Scotland, said: ‘It seems unfair that staff at Glasgow Royal Infirmary are still having to pay so much for car parking on this site, when NHS staff in most of the rest of Scotland don’t face such high charges.’

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board said: ‘As the car park is privately owned, we do not have any control over the tariffs the private company chooses to charge.’ The car park owner, Semperian, did not comment.