‘Our’ hospitals coined in £3m in car park charges

A Llanfyllin councillor and candidate for the upcoming Senedd elections has called for car parking charges to be scrapped after revealing that hospitals in Shropshire coined in almost £3million last year.

Alison Alexander, who is also the Montgomeryshire Liberal Democrat candidate for the Welsh Parliament/Senedd, has called for hospital parking charges to be scrapped permanently.  

She said that patients and staff from the Welshpool area are particularly unfairly affected as there is little option but to drive, and pointed out that £705,903 was from charging staff to park.

“I just think it’s absolutely disgraceful that hospitals continue to profit off of people’s suffering,” she said. “For those with long-term illnesses, it adds an unnecessary level of stress to what is already a traumatic point in their lives and these costs although small at first glance soon add up for repeated trips.

“While for people who live closer to Shropshire’s hospitals may find it easier to use public transport to access hospitals, this simply isn’t the case for most Welshpool residents or those from rural parts of the county.

“This isn’t even to mention the immorality of charging our hard-working NHS staff, many of whom travel from the Welshpool area, for merely going to work. Our NHS always go above and beyond, often working long and traumatic shifts even for the pandemic.

“Montgomeryshire’s Conservative MP Craig Williams should be using his position to lobby the government to scrap hospital parking fees once and for all, following the footsteps of the Welsh government in 2018.”

Parking charges were temporarily suspended at the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, with the Department of Health and Social Care providing funding to NHS trusts to cover lost revenue but are set to be reintroduced.