Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust (BHRUT) raked in a seven-figure sum last year through parking charges which includes cash from its own staff.
Figures released today by the NHS, show the trust’s own workers paid a total of £841,100 to pay to park across all its sites including King George Hospital in Goodmayes, and Queen’s Hospital in Romford.
A further £558,940 was made from parking charges paid by patients and visitors over the same time period.
This means the trust made a total of £1,400,040 in the last 12 months to this March.
NHS trusts across England made a combined total of almost £70m from staff parking charges.
Unite, a union which represents around 100,000 health workers, has slammed the “scandalous” figures, which it said amounted to a “tax on hard-pressed” employees.
Sarah Carpenter, national officer for health at Unite, said: “We would like a situation where dedicated NHS staff, who don’t earn a fortune, don’t have to pay to park their cars to go to work to look after the sick, the vulnerable and the injured 365 days a year.”
In total NHS trusts across England made almost £70m from staff parking almost £157m was raised from charges incurred by charging patients and visitors over the same period.
Patients’ rights campaigners the Patients Association has criticised the existence of parking charges for patients, describing them as “a charge on people who are unwell, levied on them because they are unwell.”
Decisions on how much to charge patients, staff and visitors to NHS sites are made by individual trusts.
However, the Department of Health and Social Care has issued guidance on how NHS organisations can make sure their policies are fair.
Richard Smith, head of security, fire safety and parking management, at BHRUT said: “These figures reflect the significant numbers of staff who are able to park at our hospitals.
“We offer various heavily-reduced charge rates for staff – with average charge per day equal to less than £2, and we have also opened more car parking spaces both on and off site in the past few months.
“All money raised from car parking not used to keep our car parks operational is reinvested into our hospitals, so it’s a valuable income stream to improve the quality of our care for patients.”
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