NHS staff hit with massive parking fines

[clairethewitch70]

This is in Wales' biggest hospital.

The Welsh Assembly abolished hospital parking charges, but the UHW is under a contract still. Staff are handing their notices in and one nurse says she will have to sell her house to pay the fines.

There are 6,000 staff but only 1,800 staff parking spaces. It they use a visitor space they get a ticket.

A judge ruled that staff have to pay £128 per ticket issued.

www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/more-70-doctors-nurses-taken-13338896

This is my local hospital. I am wondering if the Welsh Assembly will step in.

How can it be fraud? it's perfectly normal (I don't agree with these circumstances but suggesting fraud is ridiculous!)

I do find it interesting, selling parking permits with no guaranteed place. Does seem like legalised robbery to me. Might be legal but I don't think it's moral.

It happens to residents in cities all the time. A street has 50 spaces and 75 permits are sold resulting in parking wars. We see it on here all the time.

I wonder if the Union encouraged them to not pay the fines? In which case, perhaps the Union could stump up and pay the costs and fines,

It's awful and yet another example of why morale is so low in the NHS, particularly if you work unsociable hours. We have a fantastic park and ride at our local Trust... in theory. In practice it does not run to fit unsociable hours and at peak times the wait can be up to an hour for a bus. It's not a race to the bottom - just because parking can be shit at other jobs doesn't make it ok.

Is there an alternative to driving to work?

Are busses laid on or minibus transport to get staff home at unsociable hours? If not why not?
Charging people for a service - parking- but then not providing that parking 6000 staff and only 1800 spaces, is morally wrong.

My neighbour drives 10 miles to work and works 12 hour shifts, no public transport to use to get to or from work, so how else can these people get to work?

I'm all for walking and cycling as a commute but I work normal office hours and my furthest commute is 6.5miles which is easy on a bike.

More alternatives need to be looked at for commuting staff

The staff don't want free parking. They're happy to pay for a permit and do so. They just want a decent chance of being able to park most days.

My husband works for the NHS. Parking has ALWAYS been a complete joke at every hospital he has ever worked at. He has been refused parking permits in the past and told to use public transport when he was on call 24/7 and our local buses stopped running at 10pm. He has parked on piles of sand, across flower beds, on wasteground, on slopes and in ditches. His car has been trashed, his bike has been nicked, he has been issued with umpteen parking tickets when there are no spaces left and he HAS to get to theatre. God help us if they ever hired a private parking firm ...

He has queued for an hour to even enter the hospital, along with hundreds of other staff and patients.

When hospitals are so stretched and stricken financially, they can't afford to give a toss about parking for staff. Or patients for that matter. It's just something else you have to accept with the NHS.

Just to add, he never minds paying for a permit. He does mind getting a ticket when there are no staff spaces in the entire hospital, nowhere to park within 2 miles and a clinic of 18 patients waiting to see him (probably queueing to park as well). And he is an hour's drive from home.

They broke the rules and thought they could get away with it and found they couldn't. Whether or not you or anyone else disagrees with the rules is another matter.

This
I disagree with the system, but it can hardly be a surprise that not paying parking tickets causes fines

It's just something else you have to accept with the NHS.
NHS parking is bad - for staff and for patients - but it's by no means unusual. I used to teach in a school with a very small car park and no free on street parking, so I had to pay for parking. I know people who work for minimum wage in town centre shops who have to pay £7 a day to park, which is an hour of their wages gone.

We don't have to accept it though, not if we don't agree with it

Think that 1800 parking spaces is an enormous amount. At my local hospital there is maybe 250 spaces. At Guy's Hospital in London there are maybe 25 disabled only bays. No other parking at all. There is an NCP car park nearby but that is for local offices as well. Also nearly everybody in London has to use public transport and cannot drive to work and park.

From what I understand it's just a few persistant offenders who have ignored the rules and fines and so they have built up. I read the fines were only £10 at first and there was an amnesty last year so no excuse for building up tens of thousands in fines. I expect something will be sorted out though. But they can't just think the rules don't apply to them. Even if the rules are unfair.

It's a problem at new build hospitals too because they are being environmentally friendly and there are promises of amazing public transport which never materialises.

Unless a hospital is slap bang in the middle of a city then public transport is only going to be handy for a minority of staff who live on the right route/line and who work routine hours.

And there is terrible security for people who cycle in, so many stolen bikes.

I worked there too in the past. Parking is usually ok in the morning but if getting back from a peripheral clinic or on a late shift all the floors for staff parking were full. All the helpful suggestions of where else to park don't work very well when you finish a morning clinic elsewhere at 1.30 and start an afternoon clinic there at 2.
It was actually worse in other trusts where charges had been abolished as there was just nowhere to park as people parked in the hospital and go shopping.

I'm a NHS worker and have sold my car and now just use the bus or taxi. The stress at the start of a shift to park was just not worth it.

chester. Funnily enough the public transport into and around London is quite good. Even for shift workers.

If I had buses, tubes, trains then I would happily use public transport.

Try living and working in rural Wales or Yorkshire. No buses from my village to the city I work in. Not even anywhere I could drive tomthats nearer and then take a bus. No trains, no tube. No park and ride.

chester same here we live in a county which has lots of villages, buses are once a day or even once a week in some places! Not everyone can afford to live in city centres.

Just another hit to those nhs staff who are only trying to get to work to do their job in challenging circumstances.

I understand that there are not good public transport links in rural areas. However, surely parking is much easier though. I rarely see parking restrictions in country locations.

It's not just public transport in rural areas. I live in a city in the north and whilst the public transport is ok the buses to the hospital I work in stop running at 21:00, I finish at 21:30 and they don't start running on a weekend until after 8:00 which is a good hour after shift starts.
The trust used to put on a minibus from the hospital to the inner city interchange but that got stopped ages ago as a cost saving measure even though it was well used.

My commute takes me about an hour because of different bus times. If I drove it would be 20 minutes, 10 without traffic. I can understand why people are so adamant that they want to drive.

Chester the point was that the hospitals are in the towns and cities (pretty sure vast majority of cottage hospitals were closed down), so staff who live in the villages have to drive in.

My mum used to have to park in a derelict social housing site next to the hospital where she worked. She had to pop in one time I her day off, so parked there while I sat in the car and waited, and even in broad daylight it was scary. I used to worry so much about her on late shifts.

It's ridiculous that staff are being penalised like this, when all too often they have no other way of getting to work. The bike parking was a joke at that hospital - I worked there for a while doing admin and took the train then cycled (clearly not an option for a shift workers like mum) and ended up stashing my bike in an office because it just wasn't safe outside. Public transport was non existent at the time a shift worker would need.

Eveonline can I ask does it work at more or less expensive than driving and paying for a permit? Do you have far to travel? Can you taxi share at the end of a shift?