Hospital parking fees. What's the answer

[cadygal257]

Just watching morning news and it's a big topic this morning. I'm just not sure what the right answer is.
I spend a lot of time at three separate hospitals.

Hospital A- near a city centre, if they didn't charge for parking it would be full of people who work or shop nearby

Hospital b- similar issue but near a large town centre, so again would be full of people working in the nearest town

Hospital c. Could offer free parking as no big shops or business nearby

I suppose you could introduce a "verified parking system" but that's got to be paid for as well and who covers that's

I honestly think there is no easy answer to this and believe me I would highly benefit from free hospital parking, dread to think what I spend each month

But this isn't unique to people working at hospitals. It's also a problem for loads of people. Just look at your local high st bank. The staff are on fairly low wages and they won't be offered free parking. Many people rely on them being there as well.

When my husband was an in-patient for several weeks, I had to spend nearly all my time with him as he had dementia and was rather combative with the staff. Only I could calm him down. Poor thing didn't have a clue what was going on. I don't consider that " hanging around" the wards. It cost me over £13 a day in parking fees, and it is probably more expensive now as this was over eight years ago. I was tempted to use his disabled badge.

It's not that the parking isn't free, people expect to pay, it's that there often isn't enough parking for everyone who needs to park. Management whinge about public transport but a lot of hospitals are in locations not near a train station and with limited busses. Often recruitment has to to be limited to people that can walk or cycle or live on the right bus route.

I’m at the hospital most days at the monent. Visiting.
Am really impressed. Firstly that there is always a space. There’s a cheaper car park ten minutes walk up a hill. It’s pay on exit so no stressing about timing.
2hrs is £4.50 then jumps to £7.50 for 4 hrs.
There is a sign saying weekly parking is £25.

There is a bus nearly door to door that I could use but it’s £8! I would use the bus if it was cheaper. If I take my adult DC to visit it would be £32. Parking is easier and cheaper which feels wrong.

I still remember when I gave birth my MIL driving 2 hrs to visit then nearly 2 more hrs trying to park ((Kingston). She was so stressed.

If I go to our big "super" hospital, I go in the multi storey car park and pay on exit. This works well until the day one or more of the pay machines doesn't work and then there are queues of people waiting to pay.

It can take an age to park though, sometimes it's taken me more time to get through the main gate to park than it took me to drive there.

One of the small local hospitals has free parking for up to four hours, unfortunately, not all consultants will go to local hospitals to see patients so on the few occasions when I've been able to see someone there, it's been great.

I think you probably could have used his blue badge in those circumstances. When my Mum was in hospital her OH used hers when he visited, although he never used it anywhere else if she wasnt with him even if he was going to the shop/chemist etc for her.

Which is fine until you're not well/mobile enough to use it, it doesn't run when you need it, it's multiple bus/train rides away so takes an absolute age and costs more than driving and parking and probably other reasons as well.

I can drive to my city's largest hospital in about 20 minutes. It would take over an hour on the bus, longer at evenings and weekends due to connections, involve 15 minutes of walking if I was able to walk that distance and be totally unavailable between about 10 pm and 6 am.

Everywhere I have worked in my career has had free parking (I'm not in London though)

I would suggest that the 24/7 requirements for a lot of NHS staff means they are a special instance.

There should be fast regular and cheap buses from local transport hubs.

Our nearest hospital has had free parking since covid.

Parking is impossible, it’s full by 8am and nothing opens up all day. Presumably all staff, but also it’s near town.

How often are you in and out in 2 hours? You're lucky if you get seen within 2 hours of your appointment time.

My DFather's local hospital offers free parking for anyone with a blue badge and now he gets free parking via oncology as he is there multiple times a week at the moment.

I think that's a good system, I don't mind paying for one off appointments or for visiting but if he had to pay every day it would cost a fortune.

Our local hospital has a maximum day rate of £4.50 which was a big relief when we were in paeds A&E for 15 hours!

Free in Wales.

So it can be done.

They need a way of doing free/discounted parking for patients and staff while at the same time excluding people who aren't using the hospital yet would use free or cheap parking.

Perhaps issue a code with the appointment letter that can be entered in the ticket machine/or via cameras/apps. Problem is that it would require admin/infrastructure to manage, that they won't have the resources for, and they also need the income to run the car park or cost of running the hospital in general.

There needs to be better planning around parking in the first place. A new hospital was built near us. I was asked to be on a patient consultation board. One of the first issues I raised was that they had only allocated TEN disabled parking spaces. TEN! At a hospital! They seemed so surprised when I brought it up that there might be more need for disabled spaces in a hospital car park than in normal car parks.

I also said that the amount of parking planned would not be enough. They had the option of building a multistorey car park but just made it one level.

Fast forward ten years and what has happened? They've had to convert one entire car park into disabled spaces and its still rammed and impossible for disabled people to park. There are huge tailbacks of people trying to get into the main one level car park. Not only is this annoying and inconvenient for patients but it costs the NHS in people missing their appointments or being constantly late. People end up parking dangerously in all sorts of places causing accidents and more tailbacks. They're now talking about building a multistorey car park but it would mean that the main car park would have to close for it to be built and there is nowhere else for people to park in the meantime so they probably aren't going to do it.

I'm no expert in building planning or anything like that. I'm just a person who uses the hospital a lot. It's so frustrating that I could see all these issues happening (and raised it at the meetings!) but none of the people whose job this is seemed to think of it!

There needs to be better planning around parking in the first place.

The problem is planning has been captured by the anti-car lobby since the 80s. It's been politically (and investmentally, if that's a word) discouraged, as are most things that encourage private motoring. You are supposed to use public transport like the environmentalists have been banging on about for years.

The fact it coincides nicely with the ability to pack more houses into less space (and therefore maximum profits for housebuilders) makes it irresistible.

'It's not faaaiiir', don't be daft! The same applies to staff in every job with a free staff car park. To flip it, why should those who don't drive get free transport when car owners have to pay to run their vehicles?

However, I do think patient (and their carers) access should be better supported.

unless she was likely to be coming home then he shouldn’t have used a blue badge space.

Possibly but the Blue Badge is allowed to be used if the vehicle was being used for her benefit so you could argue the point as he was taking her clean clothes, food etc.
Her OH was very strict usually about not using it unless my Mum was in the car (although it is allowed) so I think that he must have had very good reason to believe he could

Why do so many car drivers think they are entitled to free parking? Parking costs are part of car running costs.
There are 2 huge multi storey car parks at my local hospital. The building and maintenance and staffing costs all need to be covered. Surely it’s preferable for car drivers to pay those costs rather than to take the money from hospital budgets?

Sadly, if BB parking is free, you will get cunts abusing it.

The hospital near me which doesn't charge for BB parking has a camera exit and (at t8mes) requires the physical BB to be presented with the person it covers in the car. And to give an idea of the scale of abuse, when they introduced that system, for the first 2 weeks the 2 floors dedicated to BB parking were empty.

For a while I used to enjoy a Costa and watch the traffic wardens in our high street rigorously checking BB parking on the high street. Amazing how many strapping young men "forgot" granny.

I don't mind paying for parking, as long as it's a reasonable amount. My local hospital does pay on exit and I think they offer passes under various circumstances which is fair. I don't think staff should have to pay.
The main issue is lack of parking, that's what causes the stress when you have to go, and there's often no alternative parking nearby.
In an ideal world more hospitals need to be built, or hospitals rebuilt on bigger sites with public transport links and enough parking for the staff and population they are now serving.

Page 5 makes it clear that you can’t use it just because you’re doing jobs for someone.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6139ef438fa8f503b02d1e6b/rights-and-responsibilities-easy-read.pdf

I cant open that link but I stand corrected if it does indeed say that.