Hospital parking costs a ‘tax on the sick’

Patients, visitors and staff paid £2.47million in car parking charges inside a year at the Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, it has been revealed.

The Trust runs Rochdale Infirmary, the Royal Oldham Hospital, North Manchester and Fairfield General hospitals and a range of community services.

Barry Waterhouse, Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust Travel and Access Manager at the Trust said: “All of the revenue we get from car parking charges, after costs have been covered, is reinvested back into our facilities across our four main hospital sites.

“Our parking for patients and visitors who are blue badge holders is free and in August 2015 we introduced further parking concessions for patients and visitors as well as a lower £1 for up to one hour charge.

“In the summer we opened a new 562 space staff parking area at The Royal Oldham Hospital at Westwood Park. This represented a significant investment of £2.6m and clearly demonstrates our commitment to reinvest the charges from parking for the benefit of car park users. This has freed up more parking spaces for use by patients and visitors within the hospital site which is better for local residents.”