Car parking charges to be cut for all NHS staff in Lincolnshire
Staff at the United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust are to benefit from cheaper parking from next April, following an agreement reached with UNISON.
The cost of parking at Lincoln County Hospital, Grantham and District Hospital, Pilgrim Hospital Boston and County Hospital Louth is to be halved from next spring after a year-long campaign by UNISON, saving staff as much as £150 a year.
UNISON East Midlands regional organiser Elliot Dean said: “This agreement will see car parking charges for NHS staff halved next year. This will put more than £600,000 a year back into the pockets of hard-working NHS staff across the four sites.
“But this isn’t the end of the road. We’ll be keeping up the pressure on trust managers and hope that before long they’ll abolish car parking charges altogether for staff.”
NHS parking charges have been abolished in Wales and most of Scotland. Some hospitals in England have defended the revenues, saying some or all of the money is put back into patient care or spent on maintaining car parks.
– UNISON has developed a hospital parking charter, which calls on trusts to:
- only charge staff for the hours their vehicles are parked at the hospital
- guarantee a parking place for all staff with valid parking permits
- provide emergency bays for on-call staff so they can park for free
- ensure the cost of parking is more affordable so staff who earn less pay less
- scrap parking charges for staff with disabilities
- make on-site parking free for all staff on night shifts.
– UNISON is the UK’s largest union, with more than 1.3 million members providing public services – in education, local government, the NHS, police service and energy. They are employed in both the public and private sectors.