BILLIONS MORE FOR OUR HOSPITALS NHS DRY £60m riches of ‘sick tax’ car parking pair

Patients waiting more than 18 weeks for planned treatment. NHS waiting times are the longest they’ve been for almost a decade Number of nursing vacancies in England, according to Royal College of Nursing NHS beds lost since 1987, from 299,000 to 142,000 today TWO fatcats behind one of Britain’s biggest hospital parking firms are now worth a combined £60million.

Ian Langdon and Ellis Green run CP Plus, which manages around 40 car parks for 20 hospital trusts.

More than £147million was spent on hospital parking in England last year and charities, unions and MPs from all sides have blasted the fees as a “tax on the sick”.

Fresh accounts for London-based CP Plus show its parent company made £3.7million last year and is now valued at more than £28million.

Mr Langdon, 64, is worth £32million and is selling a townhouse in St John’s Wood, North London for £3.7million.

His partner Mr Green, 62, has £28million, including a £5million home with pool in nearby Hampstead and drives a Porsche which has the word RAT within its number plate.

The pair, who earned £6million each last year, also own a property investment firm worth more than £14million.

They launched CP Plus in 1991. Clients include the NHS,

COINING IT South West Trains, British Land, BP, Roadchef and Moto service stations.

The CP Plus car park at Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford charges £4 an hour – the most expensive NHS site in the country. The profits will fuel anger about private firms raking it in from the NHS.

A third of trusts increased parking charges last year despite Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt previously admitting the fees were a “stealth tax on the vulnerable”.

In 2014, he introduced new guidelines urging trusts to offer free or reduced-cost spaces for cancer patients, the disabled, relatives and staff.

But the rules were not legally binding and many trusts chose to ignore them. Critics claim the Government has shied away from axing them because they earn up to £150million a year for the Health Service.

A spokesman for the firm said: “CP

Plus manages some 400 car parking sites across the UK, of which around 10 per cent are NHS hospital trust sites.

“All parking charges and tariffs are strictly controlled and set by each individual NHS trust.”

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