FRESH calls have been made to scrap hospital car parking fees for staff after it was announced charges for those working at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) will rise from £50 to £57 a month.
The price rise, coming into effect tomorrow (Thursday, June 1), will mean full-time Coventry healthcare workers will now have to pay £684 a year to park at work.
Last December, Coventry North West MP Taiwo Owatemi handed in a petition signed by more than 800 Coventrians to Health Secretary, Steve Barclay, calling for hospital car parking charges to be scrapped.
Ms Owatemi said she saw the latest price increase as an effective pay cut which would ‘further damage staff morale’.
“I have repeatedly called on Ministers to introduce a coordinated national approach so our hard-working healthcare workers do not continue to be hammered by these extortionate charges.
“But the government has not listened and its refusal to act will leave our doctors, midwives, surgeons, nurses and more picking up the bill.
“Whilst staff will now face a 14 per cent hike in car parking charges, the government has offered them a pay rise of just five per cent.
“During a national cost-of-living crisis and at a time when we have 124,000 vacancies across the NHS, this news will make it harder to recruit and retain the healthcare workers we so desperately need.”
A University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust spokesperson said: “The difficult decision to update monthly staff car parking charges has been made as a result of inflation rises in line with the Retail Price Index set as part of our car park contractual obligations.
“We delayed implementing these changes by two months to allow for a detailed review of alternative options but none of these were deemed to be financially viable.
“All money generated goes directly towards improvements and running costs of our car parks so budgets for patient care do not fund them.”
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