Anger as hospital parking charges for NHS staff reinstated

NHS staff at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital have hit out after parking charges were reinstated following their suspension during the pandemic amid the cost of living crisis.

Around 20,000 NHS workers at the West Midlands’ biggest hospital trust, including 7,000 nurses, will have to pay for parking from May.

University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust (UHB), which runs the QE, along with others hospitals including Heartlands and Solihull, announced it would be reinstating charges from May after the Government said parking policies should return to normal.

Some other trusts in the Black Country, however, have said they will not be reintroducing parking charges.

Olga Leach-Walters, a nurse and union branch chair, said some NHS workers had told her parking fees would be “unaffordable”.

UHB said the decision had been taken following the Government’s announcement and it was “actively working on a range of options, to best support staff to get to and from work”.

Three Black Country trusts – Wolverhampton, Walsall and Sandwell – have said they currently have no plans to bring back charges.

It means nurses at Queen Elizabeth Hospital will have to pay to park, but those at Birmingham City Hospital will not, as it is run by Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust.

NHS workers were routinely charged for parking until the pandemic struck two years ago and, chiming with the public mood towards tireless, lifesaving frontline hospital staff at a time of national crisis, the practice was temporarily scrapped. It means income hospitals make from parking has taken a hit since 2020.

Ms Leach-Walters, chair of the Royal College of Nursing’s South Birmingham

branch, said: “There is a feeling from some that it is unfair. Some feel it’s uncomfortable, some feel it’s unaffordable, some feel it’s okay. With all the rising of everything, they think ‘this has risen’, they are not expecting car parking as well.

“Members have called and said they can’t afford it, others have said they will just have to afford it.”

Ms Leach-Walters pointed out it would not just be staff at UHB who would be affected.

“Compared with other hospitals, I think it’s still not bad with what we have to pay,” she added.

A UHB spokesman said: “Following the Government’s announcement of the end of funding for free parking for NHS staff, car parking charges will be reintroduced on our hospital sites from May. Trust staff working night shifts will receive free parking, in line with national policy. We are actively working on a range of options, to best support staff to get to and from work.”

But TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said scrapping free parking in the middle of a cost of living crisis is a “lousy way to repay” staff who had “put their lives on the line to get us through this pandemic”.

The GMB called on the Government to stop “scrabbling money back off hard-up workers”.