THE WORCESTERSHIRE Acute Hospitals NHS Trust has been named and shamed by the national Labour Party over charging disabled drivers for parking at their hospitals.
According to the figures released by NHS Digital 139 hospital sites in England charge disabled patients and visitors for parking.
Among them are the Worcestershire Royal and the Alexandra, which are operated by the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals Trust.
Justin Madders, Labour’s Shadow Health Minister, said: “It is a disgrace that Jeremy Hunt has done nothing to tackle parking charges for disabled people, despite acknowledging himself that they are unfair.
“Disabled people often have no choice but to drive to hospital, and it’s wrong to target them with parking fees.
“The truth is hospitals are being forced to introduce or increase parking charges because they are desperately short of cash.
“This Government has caused a financial crisis in the NHS, and disabled people are paying the price.”
A spokesperson for the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said: “We regularly benchmark our car parking charges against other local hospital trusts to ensure that our charges remain in line with, or cheaper, than the average hospital parking charges.
“As some of our patients require regular visits to our hospitals, we also offer a special concessionary parking charge of £1 per day for parents visiting children in our care, patients with cancer and other long-stay patients and their visitors.”
She added the majority of income gained from the charges was invested back into the maintenance and upgrade of car parking and road systems and providing security.
“Any surplus is then put back in to funding frontline NHS services.”
A Department of Health Spokesperson said: “Patients and families should not have to deal with the added stress of complex and unfair parking charges.
“NHS organisations are locally responsible for the methods used to charge, and we want to see them coming up with flexible options that put patients and their families first.”
WHAT do you think? Should hospital trusts charge disabled people for parking? Should there be car park charges at hospitals at all? Email us your views to [email protected] or write to the address on the letters page.
