Hospital parking giant condemned for ‘cashing in on the sick’ as profits surge

One of Britain’s biggest hospital parking management firms has seen its profits surge, prompting fresh calls to scrap the charges.

ParkingEye made a £9.8m pre-tax profit last year, up by 48 per cent from £6.6m in 2016, its latest accounts show.

The company, which is Britain’s biggest private parking firm with at least a dozen hospitals among its 3,500 sites across the country, also revealed that its annual revenue rose from £31.1m to £38.2m.

Drivers and patients condemned the business for “profiting from the sick”, some saying hospital parking should be free and others suggesting the money should be ploughed back into the NHS.

Online, Helen Midworth commented: “Utterly disgusting. What kind of nation allows this profiteering on hospitals that need parking?”

Janet Cooke wrote: “Hospital parking should either be free for a very low minimum payment if they are making all this money.” And Annie Kelly said: “This is just the start of hospital privatisation!”

Health campaigners and some MPs have long condemned NHS parking fees as a “tax on the sick” and Labour pledged to scrap them in their 2017 election manifesto.

The Patients Association argues it’s unfair that hospital car parking fees were scrapped in Scotland and Wales in 2008 - although a few hospitals with contracts with private parking companies still charge – while drivers in England still have to pay.

A petition on the government website to scrap parking fees has more than 22,000 signatures.

Unison head of health Sara Gorton told the Sunday Mirror: “It’s quite wrong for private firms to be coining it in at the expense of NHS staff, patients and relatives who need to park at hospitals across the country.

“The new health secretary should make scrapping these immoral charges top of his to do list.”

Rachel Power, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: "We believe that patients should not be effectively charged for being ill.

“However, parking charges currently generate revenue for hospitals, at a time when their finances are under immense pressure and the quality of care for patients is falling.

"At a time when patients are receiving undignified and unsafe care on hospital corridors, car parking charges are not the top priority – undesirable though they may be.

“That said, the huge profitability of the business of administering parking charges does raise questions over whether enough of this revenue is going to hospitals.”

Most NHS trusts in England use private firms to run hospital car parks under contracts worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, and say the income from charges are essential for patient care or are put into car-park maintenance and improvements.

Some trusts allow certain patients and relatives to park for free, such as those undergoing chemotherapy.

But earlier this month the government insisted scrapping hospital parking charges would cost the Treasury too much – more than £200m.

Department of Health regulations state that NHS car parking charges are required to make a profit so that the NHS is not “subsidising” commercial activities such as shopping facilities.

Last year the RAC revealed in a report that many hospitals force drivers to pay as soon as they arrive - so some patients may overestimate and overpay for their stay.

ParkingEye uses cameras to record the number plates of vehicles that enter and leave car parks so they can be traced if drivers fail to pay, and it accesses the most vehicle keeper records to hand out parking tickets.

Last week the company’s owner, Capita, announced it was selling it for £235m.

ParkingEye says less than 10 per cent of its business comes from the NHS.

On its website, it says: “Car park management within the NHS has been a delicate subject for many years. For the past 10 years, ParkingEye has been working with a large number of trusts to improve the parking situations for their hospitals and medical centres. We have a deep understanding and appreciation of the importance of the car park to the reputation of the trust and to the perception within local communities and the media.”

A spokesman said: “ParkingEye’s recent performance has been driven by a large increase in our client base across the UK. Our clients set the tariffs in their car parks. We manage them on their behalf.

"We are a member of the British Parking Association, and follow its strict code of practice.”

The association says that before charges were introduced hospital car parks were often congested and chaotic, with vehicles parking without consideration for others and frequently blocking emergency vehicle access. Car parks were often used by commuters, shoppers and local workers.

Last year hospitals in England made a record £174m in charging for parking, an investigation earlier this year found. The figure for 2016-17 was 6 per cent up on the previous financial year.

The Independent has asked NHS Providers for figures on what proportion of revenue goes to trusts and what proportion goes to private parking management firms but has not yet received a response.