NOTES FROM BIG BEN …


Hospital Parking and the British Parking Association Charter


BY PETER GUEST H


ISTORICALLY, THE BRITISH National Health Service (NHS) did not charge for hospital parking, and numerically, it indeed is still true that most public hospitals in the


UK still have free parking. However, as car owner- ship and use has grown, parking has become more congested, and gradually more and more hospitals have introduced charges.


This has been done for several reasons. The NHS does not


fund parking facilities at hospitals, so each has to fund its park- ing outside the health service budget.Atmany of the bigger cen- ter-city hospitals, parking had become the local free lot, mean-


Chronically ill people are often unable to work, and if they have to attend hospital several times a week, the charge could simply be unaffordable...


ing that local workers or even hospital staff usurped the spaces provided for patients to the point where people were missing treatment because they couldn’t park. In one location where the district hospital sat between the


local prison and a teacher training college, the hospital’s outpa- tient serviceswere almost brought to a halt by this problem, until a small charge finally freed up the car park for the patients itwas meant to serve. Finally, of course, it provided money, and more than one hospital CEO was able to counter complaints about parking charges by pointing to a new piece of medical equip- ment and hence a new formof treatment that was paid for by the parking surplus. People complained, of course, and in Scotland,Wales and


Northern Ireland, the regional governments instructed NHS properties to remove parking with, in some locations, a return to precisely the sorts of problems the charges had eliminated. Try- ing to fix these problems has resulted in unwieldy bureaucratic systems and attempts to introduce penalty charges for abusers, which, of course, are completely contrary to the government’s “no parking charges” edict. TheWestminster government has been barraged with com-


plaints that they haven’t abandoned charges in England. The government had suggested that hospitals should make special


18 JUNE 2010 • PARKING TODAY • www.parkingtoday.com


provision for people who had to make multiple trips to hospitals or were spending long periods there. The idea was that hospitals would give people such as patients being treated for cancer or having dialysis a season ticket or pass that would limit their parking costs. This was to ensure that patients needing long courses of treatment in a health service that was “free at the point of delivery” wouldn’t find themselves unable to attend because they would have to pay parking charges, which were set to deter city workers. This is a genuine problem. Chronically ill people are often


unable to work, and if they have to attend hospital several times aweek, the charge could simply be unaffordable to someone sur- viving on a small disability allowance. Similarly, hospitals were asked to use both common sense and a little basic humanity when dealing with those who are visiting seriously or terminally ill patients.The last thing someone needs having satwith a dying relative is to find that they have to pay a big parking charge or


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