Letter: Hospital Car Parking Charges Are Regressive

Published on: 17 Jul, 2019
Updated on: 17 Jul, 2019

From Brian Creese

spokesperson for the Guildford Labour Party

In response to: Car Parking Charges Reduced at Royal Surrey

The NHS should be funded from general taxation, a progressive system where the rich provide more towards funding than the poor.

Funding by parking fee is regressive since everyone in a car pays the same regardless of age, income, physical condition or size of car. If you have a close relative at Royal Surrey it is likely you will be paying £5 a day (at least) visiting which may be at a time when household income is reduced because of illness.

This is, of course, to ignore the question of how much the private car parking contractor makes from their contract with the hospital. If you pay £4.50 for 2 hours parking, how much actually reaches the hospital? Guildford Labour has asked this question, but we received no answer because it is a financially sensitive piece of information.

To my mind, this level of parking cost is completely unacceptable and that much of it goes to create profits for a contractor is entirely wrong.

Responses to Letter: Hospital Car Parking Charges Are Regressive

John Perkins Reply

July 17, 2019 at 12:43 pm

I’ve always found it strange that publicly-funded organisations can hide their activities behind a screen of “commercial confidentiality”.

Taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent and, also, any savings made from outside contributions.

A hospital car park space is a publicly-owned asset and, when rented out, should be shown in the accounts to be providing a return on value.