Hospitals: Parking

(asked on 26th February 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information his Department holds on the number of hospitals charging blue badge holders for parking.


Answered by
Steve Barclay Portrait
Steve Barclay
Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
This question was answered on 6th March 2018

The Department published National Health Service patient, visitor and staff car parking principles on 23 August 2014.

The principles state that concessions, including free or reduced charges or caps, should be available for disabled people, including people with temporary disabilities as well as Blue Badge holders. As in other settings, the access the Blue Badge Scheme provides does not preclude the making of some level of charge in some cases.

The NHS itself is responsible for ensuring that charges are fairly applied. Patients, visitors and staff who have problems with car parking should therefore contact the NHS organisation which runs the car park.

On concessions, the principles are as follows;

Concessions including free or reduced charges or caps should be available for the following groups:

- disabled people;

- frequent outpatient attenders;

- visitors with relatives who are gravely ill, or carers of such people;

- visitors to relatives who have an extended stay in hospital, or carers of such people;

- carers of people in the above groups where appropriate; and

- staff working shifts that mean public transport cannot be used.

NHS car parking data including the number of hospitals charging for disabled parking is collected annually through Estates Return Information Collection (ERIC). All ERIC data is published at:

http://hefs.hscic.gov.uk/ERIC.asp

The latest available data for 2016-17 sets out that 132 hospitals sites in England charge for disabled parking.

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