Hospital parking charges are an unfair tax on health
OVER the past few weeks, I’ve had cause to visit both of our local hospitals on several occasions. Like most people, I leave after every visit blown away by the brilliance of those who work for the NHS.
Their dedication to patients, determination to get things done even when pressure is mounting from all sides and, above all, the good spirits they display while working with worried patients and relatives are all things we should never stop being thankful for.
But there is something else I keep thinking about following multiple trips to both Burnley General and the Royal Blackburn – and that’s the parking charges which anyone visiting either site has to stump up.
At £3.50 for a 24-hour period, it perhaps isn’t that expensive, and maybe isn’t something to worry about if you’re only visiting the hospital once. But if you suddenly find yourself visiting regularly, either as a patient or a relative, the costs can soon mount up.
Bear in mind the state pension went up by as little as £4.50 a week only last month, despite inflation running at over 10% and many people facing hundreds of pounds of increases in energy bills too.
Put bluntly, the NHS isn’t really free at the point of access if you’re having to pay to park to access the NHS.
There will be many reasons why the East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust charges for parking.
One argument, often used by hospital trusts, is that if they didn’t charge for parking, non-hospital drivers, such as commuters, would use their car parks rather than nearby ones.
That can’t be the case at either big hospital as neither is in a logical place for someone to park up and walk into a town centre, or any other major employment site.
Some hospitals argue that charging for parking encourages people to use public transport.
And it is, of course, really important you can get public transport to hospital.
And maybe going by bus to hospital is a viable option for people living close by.
But for people living in Rossendale, an appointment at Burnley General becomes a day trip and a half if you want to travel by bus.
Even a trip to the Royal Blackburn, which at least has a direct bus service from Rawtenstall, requires careful planning and a fair bit of waiting around.
We, after all, didn’t ask for hospital services to steadily move out of Rossendale over the years, so it seems quite unfair to essentially charge us for parking once we’ve driven to access those services.
Of course, there’s a revenue side in all of this too – charging us to park there helps pay for the upkeep of the car parks, and may well pay for security of those car parks too.
But I keep returning to the fairness of the NHS.
Over the last two decades, hospital services have steadily become more centralised in larger hospitals, for good, clinical reasons.
But that means we have to travel further to get to them, and in places like Rossendale – rural, with small towns and never going to get a super hospital in the area – it essentially becomes a tax on health on make us pay to park to access hospital services.
Maybe the NHS can ill-afford to stop charging us parking fees.
But what happens when people needing help can ill-afford to keep paying to park at hospitals?