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News (2009)
Articles for 2008 are listed below:
Fair charging is the healthy option (February 2009)
The debate on hospital parking charges has reignited with a vengeance. Since the abolition of parking charges at NHS Trust hospitals in Scotland in January and in Wales in June 2008, the pressure to review the decision in England has been growing.
Many common myths surround the introduction of hospital parking charges. Let's address some of them head-on.
Why was it introduced? Contrary to what some popular newspapers and partisan lobbying organisations say, charging was brought in as a way of managing congestion and ensuring sufficient parking for bona fide patients, visitors and staff, not as a way of generating extra income.
Do management companies exploit the situation for profit? Car park specialists like CP Plus do not make excessive profits from hospital parking. It's true we are paid for managing facilities but we are only appointed after going through a competitive and rigorous tendering process to ensure that the Trust receives best value and a cost-effective service.
Are profits 'creamed off' for the NHS? Any profits generated from parking are ploughed straight back into the hospital's budget -Trust's can't make a profit. They go either to improve healthcare services or to the parking services themselves, resulting in, for example, CCTV, enhanced night-time security or other improved services or facilities.
Are charges 'a tax on the sick'? We are all used to reading such emotive phrases associated with hospital parking. In my view such headlines are the result of sensationalist, inaccurate reporting that has little regard for the truth and a misunderstanding of the real issues.
The issue of the chronically sick can be readily answered. All Trusts should have exemption and concessionary schemes in place to ensure patients and others who have to visit the hospital regularly - such as cancer patients - are not disadvantaged. So, in almost every case, it is not true to say that those with a serious health condition or those visiting them, have to shoulder a heavy financial burden.
A typical example of this is the press headline screaming that it costs £15 to park for the day at a hospital, when it is clear that this type of tariff is there to discourage long term parking by commuters or town centre users or indeed staff who do not qualify for a permit.
Why is there so much confusion and inaccuracy in the coverage of this issue? In my opinion, much of the outcry is politically motivated. Many of those calling for free parking are simply jumping on the populist bandwagon, with no understanding of the wider picture, no responsibility for the consequences and no thought for the dilemma of Trusts left struggling to manage their parking.
Those shouting loudest in the current debate often claim to be championing the cause of hospital staff. Yet we, as frontline suppliers, know only too well that invariably it is hospital staff who are the worst offenders when it comes to parking misuse. In other words, free parking actually benefits staff much more than patients. In fact, as every operator knows, at Hospitals where there are no parking controls, staff fill up most of the available spaces first thing in the morning, leaving nowhere for patients to park when they arrive for their appointments a little later.
What has been the experience in places where charges have been abolished? In Wales, one city centre Trust has told us of the considerable problems the abolition of charges has caused. Its parking facilities are being routinely misused by commuters, businesses and shoppers. I'm certain their experience is not unusual. Wherever there is free parking close to a town centre or rail station, there will be those who take advantage of it.
In Scotland, NHS Trusts are already beginning to reap the whirlwind. Trusts are complaining of parking chaos, with staff monopolising spaces to such an extent that restrictions have had to be introduced. Now staff (those who do not qualify for a permit) and their representatives are protesting about only being given four hours' free parking.
The scrapping of charges has also led to wasted resources. NHS Trusts in both Wales and Scotland have had to replace new signs and machines to support the 'no charges' regimes. Some have had to install additional sophisticated equipment, including cameras, to enforce time restrictions. And that's without counting the human cost of redundancies among on-site enforcement staff, resulting from the removal of charges.
All NHS services have to be paid for, directly or indirectly, one way or another. Hospital patients, staff and visitors have no fundamental right to free parking. To put it another way, if your GP's practice happened to be in a town centre, would you expect to park for nothing if you worked there or when you make an appointment? Of course not. And why is parking being picked on, prescriptions and dental care aren't free either; surely charging for prescriptions is more of a 'tax on the sick' than parking - after all, you have a choice whether you use a car but no choice about your prescription.
Most importantly, why should those who do not drive to the hospital - those who walk, bike or take public transport - be expected to subsidise those who choose to drive? And even where there are charges, those charges are often cheaper than a return journey by public transport. None of this makes any sense when government has instructed Trusts to formulate a Green Transport Policy with the aim of reducing car usage by 5%.
So, if no charges are made, who pays for providing and managing parking? If individual motorists do not pay, it simply means the cost has to come out of another NHS pot.
In the case of Scotland and Wales, NHS Trust parking is now subsidised out of their overall healthcare budgets, leaving less for other kinds of healthcare. We have to ask ourselves if that is what we want in England?
On this overcrowded island, no-one has a right to free parking. If charges everywhere were dropped and parking was unrestricted, the result would be national gridlock. We simply do not have enough parking spaces for the more than 33 million vehicles on the UK roads today.
Fair parking charges at NHS Trust hospitals, with concessions for special cases, are the obvious and only answer.
Parking first for Royal Surrey (February 2009)
In a first for the UK, car park management specialist CP Plus is installing a groundbreaking new pay and display system at the busy Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Trust site in Guildford, as part of a five-year contract.
CP Plus's Paul Levene describes the innovative solution as "pay and display with a difference."
"The difference is, at the Royal Surrey patients and their families will be able to pay a top-up fee from within the hospital, if, for any reason, they need to purchase additional parking time," Paul explains. "With a normal pay and display system, motorists have to pay in advance and guess how long they will be on site. Because hospital appointments can be so unpredictable, this isn't always a practical option."
The system works like this. On arrival the visitor pays for a ticket which is in two parts. One is left in the vehicle, as normal, the other is taken into the hospital. If, through no fault of their own, the visitor has to stay longer than anticipated - because, for instance, they are waiting to receive treatment in A&E or their outpatient appointment over-runs - they simply insert the second part of the ticket into a machine in the hospital waiting room, key in their registration number and purchase extra time.
"The patient only pays for the time used and is relieved of the stress of worrying about either having to rush outside to pay for more time, or being penalised for going over the prepaid time.
"Though this kind of top-up pay and display equipment is in usage in America, as far as we are aware, this is the first one of its kind to be installed anywhere in the UK.
"As the leading provider of car park and security services within the NHS, we've been looking for a long time for a fairer pay and display solution for Trust sites. In effect it gives our clients the flexibility of a pay on foot system - which, in any event, is not always suitable for use on hospital sites and is expensive to install and maintain - with the convenience of a pay and display system. The ideal answer."
