Telford MP, Lucy Allan, is to request a meeting with new Princess Royal Hospital Chief Executive Simon Wright to look at scrapping car parking charges after a Press Association investigation found hospitals in England are making millions from parking charges.
Lucy feels the current car parking charges are unacceptable when patients and visitors in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland cannot by law be charged to park at hospital.
At the Princess Royal Hospital parking for 2 hours costs £2.50, the equivalent price for Telford Town Centre car parks is just £1.60, some 36% less.
Currently visitors to the PRH have to pay in advance and hope that their appointment isn’t delayed. Visitors to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital already have the least worst option of being able to pay on exit.
The Princess Royal Hospital does offer free parking for patients receiving dialysis, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and for those visiting on bereavement – a step that Lucy wants to see rolled out to all.
Calling for the parking charges to be scrapped, Lucy Allan MP said: “Hospital parking charges are a tax on illness and hit those who are least able to pay. I want to see these chargers cut as soon as possible as do the 5,000 people who signed a petition of mine on this.
“It surely cannot be right for English citizens to pay to park at hospital when friends and family in other parts of the UK do not need to.
“When it is cheaper to park at our shopping centre than at our hospital something has clearly gone very wrong.
“Whilst the most public sector services have had to save money the NHS has been protected from cuts since 2010 with the government pledging an extra £10 billion a year by 2020 as requested by the head of the NHS England, Simon Stevens.”