For one who has visited a hospital (and that’s most of us) you will know that parking charges for genuine patients and visiting relatives are
a) expensive
b) inconvenient (why do they always want exact change)
c) unfair recent stories of certain trusts making hundreds of thousands of pounds in profit prove my final point.
I am sure that the bulk of this money will come from subsequent fines when people run over on the meter. As if we haven’t got better things to worry about when visiting a sickly relative or waiting for your wife to give birth!! It is we, the tax payer, that fund the NHS through our NI contributions, is it really too much to ask for an FOC parking space when we go to visit a sick friend or relative? Of course the fact that almost £100million is taken in parking charges is a self evident scandal, it poses more questions than answers, namely:
Q - Where did all this money go? Back into the NHS or into the coffers of NCP and Co?
Q - Should private companies be responsible for running NHS facilities such as car parks? If so why can't this be extended to other areas?
Q - Would it really be too difficult to allocate a parking pass, with conditions say for patients in for more than 3 days?
Of course there will always be those that take advantage of free parking, especially in the inner cities so this has be guarded against by way of charging, such people should pay and rightly so, but surely that can't be too difficult to police? No matter what the pros and cons are, the fact remains that the current system of making millions out of patients and bone fide visitors is unacceptable.
