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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To not pay hospital parking fine

478 replies

StupidFine · 09/01/2018 08:19

Last week Dd (8 months) suffered an allergic reaction and was taken to the hospital. DH followed in the car and parked without paying (we live on the border and our usual hospital is in Scotland where parking is free, but this is our first emergency and we were taken to the nearest hospital which is in England). Either way the last thing on DH mind was the bleeding parking.

Thankfully Dd was ok, but a week later DH and I are reflecting on what to do about the parking fine. Our options as we see them are:

A) pay the fine and draw a line under this incident (£40).
B) contest the fine as it was an emergency and we have a hospital note with time and reason for admission (if contest is denied fine will go up to £80 as takes 35 days to review).
C) don't pay and just ignore the fine. A colleague of mine said as we live in Scotland we don't need to tell the parking company who was driving (apparently this loophole was closed in England) and since they don't know who was driving it's very costly/time consuming and not worth the company's effort to raise a case to claim the fine.

My head says to go for option A) as I don't want things like this hanging over our head. But my heart says option C) as it's ridiculous anyone should need to pay for parking at a hospital and the fine is just an arbitrary number pulled out of the company's backside (not quite but you get the point).

WWYD?

OP posts:

19lottie82 · 09/01/2018 10:27

petbear re read my post (properly this time) , I’m not “telling the OP not to pay because MSE say not to”

I said personally I wouldn’t pay it, and gave my own experience, but did I advise the OP not to pay it? No.

I provided a link to MSE where the charge can be challenged as these companies can’t just pluck a figure out of the air and demand you pay it. Legally they are only entitled to what they have actually lost by someone parking there.

These letters have a high success rate. Writing an “appeal” is unlikely to work as they are generally sob stories (my child was ill, I couldn’t find a parking space) and if you want to win you need a legally valid reason, and even then chances are these companies will reject them anyway as they often operate outwith the law.

ShellyBoobs · 09/01/2018 10:27

YABU.

Just pay it.

Bodicea · 09/01/2018 10:30

You got treatment in nhs England. It gets less money than Scotland. £40 is a lot less than the cost nhs England would have had to pay for her care. I doubt they will be claiming the money back off the Scottish government

fucketyboo · 09/01/2018 10:30

You know something, all the people advocating that the OP should appeal a parking fine incurred because they failed to pay a parking ticket, are going to be the same people who are complaining when the NHS goes under due to underfunding.

Yes, you're quite right that I do also bemoan the chronic underfunding of the NHS - because I am a strong believer in a national health service that is free at the point of delivery. And while I would prefer there to be no parking charges, I do generally pay them without thinking much about it. In fact, I imagine that the people who end up getting a fine are almost always the ones who arrive at the hospital under especially stressful circumstances, and frankly have other things on their minds (whether or not they are actually transporting a sick child). Under these circumstances a fine of £40 (or in my case £80) is ridiculously punitive, and for this reason alone I would always appeal such a fine.

MadisonAvenue · 09/01/2018 10:31

At our local hospital you can't park without taking a token and then going through a barrier, on leaving the token then has to be inserted into a payment machine and used again to exit the car parks. It's quite a distance from the town centre and in a residential area so not somewhere that people would park for work, shopping etc if it was free.

We had a situation a few weeks ago where we didn't pay for hospital parking and got away with it, but we fully expected to return to a ticket. Our son had been in the local hospital for surgery but was transferred to another. He called to say that he was being discharged so we went to collect him and drove around all four patient/visitor car parks for half an hour, along with many other drivers, looking for a parking space with no luck whatsoever. Eventually we just left it in a permit holders parking space and went to collect our son who was taking up a valuable bed on an adult ward until we could collect him.
We would definitely have contested a fine had we been given one.

DO3271 · 09/01/2018 10:31

I would contest it. I did when I was caught out and they cancelled the charge. I was taking my daughter is as an emergency. Just explain the circumstances, no harm in trying

Dungeondragon15 · 09/01/2018 10:32

No but the OP can't lie and say the emergency patient was travelling in the car! Her DH parked and should have paid. He didn't. The fine is justified.

She doesn't need to say that the emergency patient was travelling in the car. It would probably be assumed. It may be a lie by omission but I couldn't get worked up over it considering it is to avoid paying £40 under the circumstances. Anyway, I can't see a good reason for not appealing. They might refuse but OP won't be in an worse position as a consequence (I don't think they increase the fine if the delay is due to appeal).

elliejjtiny · 09/01/2018 10:33

Just pay. yes it's ridiculous that hospital parking isn't free but we all have to suck it up.

Iprefercoffeetotea · 09/01/2018 10:34

I don't mind paying to park.

The bigger problem is many hospitals don't have enough parking and all the roads for miles around have parking restrictions. That's the bigger problem. My husband has a hospital appointment tomorrow and I will be driving him so that he does not have the stress of trying to find a space. I need to go myself in another couple of weeks and will probably park in a town centre car park and walk a mile or so. Of course, if you are actually ill, you can't walk that far!

snash12 · 09/01/2018 10:34

@petbear

It is crazy! My Mum was an A&E nurse and got fined on more than one occasion for double parking behind a colleague or on grass so she would be in the emergency dept rather than driving round local roads looking for a space!

StopTheRoundabout · 09/01/2018 10:35

This is not about whether the Op should pay the fee, this is about whether they should pay the fine. Paying the fee is fair.
If the OP's DH had paid the required fee there wouldn't have been a fine in the first place. She seems to think that because they were in England and live in Scotland, the rules don't apply to them. If you went to say France or Spain on holidays, would you ignore paying the parking fee because you live in a different country and don't feel the rules apply to you? No because it doesn't work like that. You abide by the rules of the area and Country.

Dungeondragon15 · 09/01/2018 10:36

That is a ridiculous comment. I think the NHS should be funded by taxation so that the cost is evenly spread according to people's incomes not by charging excessive parking fees to patients regardless of income, particularly if those patients can't use public transport for any reason.

LyraPotter · 09/01/2018 10:36

I'm glad your daughter is ok, and poor you for this stress

I would either pay or contest the fine. Check the rules on contesting - usually, the clock will pause for the time it takes them to review your appeal, so the fine won't increase if it takes over 35 days for them to review. This is certainly the case for council fines and is likely also true for a hospital car park.

I wouldn't advise ignoring it. It isn't true that private car parks can't / won't enforce the fine. A woman in Scotland was recently ordered to pay £24,000 to a private company for parking fines. It doesn't matter that the company doesn't know who is driving as they can simply fine whoever the car is registered to. Moreover, as this was an English hospital, English law will apply even though you live in Scotland. If the fine is enforced you could end up paying much more, as well as having things like your credit record affected.

If you do decide to contest it, good luck! There are useful templates etc online which might be helpful.

QueenUnicorn · 09/01/2018 10:37

You genuinely didn't realise that you had to buy a parking ticket, and fair enough in an emergency it would be the last thing on your mind. I would at least send an appeal.

WitchesHatRim · 09/01/2018 10:39

Personally I’d just ignore it.

Fine as long as you don't mind running the risk that you could end up in court.

These are being perused and they are winning.

Dungeondragon15 · 09/01/2018 10:39

That happened to a friend of mine (an A&E nurse) too at 5 a.m.!

19lottie82 · 09/01/2018 10:39

Queen that is NOT grounds for an appeal.
She didn’t realise? Not a legal argument.
Her child was sick? It’s a hospital! If they let everyone off on that basis, they’d go out of a business.

If the OP wants to get out of this it needs to be done the correct way.

Royalcoronation · 09/01/2018 10:39

Scottish are very lucky to have free prescriptions/parking and pretty good health support care in the community/

I'm not sure where you get this idealistic impression from but it couldn't be further from the truth for many.

Ok we get free prescriptions. But parking? Ninewells Hospital in Dundee which is a MASSIVE Teaching hospital does not offer free parking. Parking there is precious as it is without it being free. The charge is £2 something for 4 hours if I remember correctly.

We also have thousands of vulnerable people living within the community without adequate support.

19lottie82 · 09/01/2018 10:40

Witches please re read my full post (bangs head against wall).

QueenUnicorn · 09/01/2018 10:42

Queen that is NOT grounds for an appeal.
She didn’t realise? Not a legal argument.
Her child was sick? It’s a hospital! If they let everyone off on that basis, they’d go out of a business

Actually yes, if it's the first time they've done it then it is grounds. I didn't realise I had gone into congestion charging the first time I drove into London (I don't live there) I got sent a fine which was removed when I appealed with this reason.

Royalcoronation · 09/01/2018 10:42

She doesn't need to say that the emergency patient was travelling in the car. It would probably be assumed. It may be a lie by omission

When you appeal don't you have to give a reason for appeal? Like the circumstances? Because it would take a really twisted person to deliberately omit the main details of the sick child not even being in the car. That's just awful, and to save £40

19lottie82 · 09/01/2018 10:42

Scottish are very lucky to have free prescriptions

Im Scottish and I don’t feel lucky to have free prescriptions. It’s beyond stupid! The money for these doesn’t appear from a magic money tree.

If people can afford to pay then they should pay and huge amount of money it costs could be put back into the NHS or eduction.

It’s an utterly moronic scheme.

Dungeondragon15 · 09/01/2018 10:43

I think it is ridiculous to expect people to pay at the point of parking anyway as it is obvious that in this kind of circumstance many people's minds will be on other things. Who stops to read signs/buy tickets when their child needs emergency treatment. At my local hospital you pay on exit which makes a lot more sense.

RockinHippy · 09/01/2018 10:45

I would challenge it given the circumstances, I agree anyone just paying up would be a mug.

We had similar when DD kept stopping breathing & we rushed her to our kids A&E as it was quicker than waiting for an ambulance. DH was caught speeding by a speed camera on the main road outside the hospital. They dropped the charge when challenged

RockinHippy · 09/01/2018 10:46

Unless it's actually in the hospital car park which may or may not differ, parking fines here go to the LA, not the NHS

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