Letter: Hospital Car Park Takings Can Be Estimated

Published on: 14 Sep, 2016
Updated on: 14 Sep, 2016

From Ben Paton

In response to: Hospital Refuses To Say How Much It Collects In Car Park Fees

Looks like “Sir Humphrey” played a dead bat to the questions about the hospital car park takings.

But it’s dead easy to work out what the car parks should make: take the number of parking spaces, multiply by the number of days in the year, multiply by the amount each space would take if fully occupied all day and multiply by a fraction representing the estimated average daily ‘occupancy’ of the space.

If there were 100 spaces then 100 x 365 x say £2/hr [the maximum rate from October] x 24hrs x occupancy of, say, 65%. Using these figures every 100 spaces would collect gross rent of £1.139 million. There are over 100 spaces, I guess.

And what are the annual running costs? Presumably the car park pays a rent to the hospital trust? That figure can be set at almost any figure so as to ensure that the net parking income to the management company is quasi zero.

Does that imply that the car park is not very profitable? Of course not. The running cost amounts to little more than someone emptying the ticket machines a couple of times a day. That doesn’t cost much.

There’s nothing wrong with making a profit for providing a service. However some features merit mention: these car parks are for all practical purposes a monopoly.

Moreover you pay the same amount to park at midnight as at noon even though occupancy is presumably much lower at midnight. The same applies to weekend parking. And the machines don’t even give change.

High charges in these circumstances are plainly exploitative. Car parks at hospitals are monopolies that already make supernormal profits. Is it justifiable to increase those profits?

Only if they are subsidising the health service. The hospital service is free at the point of service – and so paying to park a car is a small contribution to the cost of the hospital service. A bit of transparency would not go amiss.