At the end of the 1960’s/early 1970’s I was on holiday and
took part in a ‘happening’, a last flowering of the counterculture of the 60’s.
It was organised by a maverick artist and run by students from the local art
college. It perplexed most people, as a young kid I loved it.
There were a series of rather provocative set pieces; I
remember someone having a conversation down a pipe with an imaginary person
‘buried’ in the sandy beach. There were arty installations. It was great.
Best of all, in an era when ‘bingo’ was a mass entertainment,
they had a bingo session on the beach. Free cards were handed out and almost
fought for. About 50 people (including me) were avidly marking off the numbers
as they were called by a solemn man in a dinner jacket and bow tie. My
excitement mounted as I noticed that my card was filling up really quickly. I
didn’t notice how hushed it had all got.
The last number was called and after a nanosecond looking at
my card – I was leaping up and shouting ‘BING-GO!!.
The problem was that everybody else was doing exactly the
same – we all had the same numbers.
I found it very funny – when I got over my initial
disappointment. But a lot of other people (even though it was all free) got
quite angry. Umbrellas (in those far off days people went to the beach well
prepared for an English summer) were waived in anger at the bingo caller.
It all came back to me today, as it does every day I visit my
poor old Mum at Wexham Hospital in Slough. Visiting starts at 2pm and there is
a stampede of cars for a space like the race for a claim in a landrush.
We all drive in through the automatic barriers, taking a pay
and display ticket from the machine. The only problem is that they always let
in about 40 more cars than there are parking spaces for. So, we drive round and
round an increasingly gridlocked carpark until in the end, one by one – we give
up and leave.
It’s obviously a daily ritual because when I press the panic
button on the exit barrier, the long-suffering controller of the car park just
lets me out without paying.
Meanwhile on the road outside, there is a small amount of
free parking – today there were three parking enforcement officers prowling
like sharks, waiting to catch anyone who overstayed the time limit.
So all this week I haven’t been able to buy a parking space,
had to park miles away and walk far too far to get in.
The private contractor of this fiasco has a motto on the
barrier machine;
Make a difference
So I checked out some information about the parking and where
the money goes, the interesting bits are towards the end of this Freedom of
Information request made by someone more annoyed than me, last year.
What is most relevant (apart from the lack of any mention of
the amount of profit made from us by the private contractor) is that the rest
of the money that staff and patients have to pay actually goes to paying for
security at the Hospital.
And there we were thinking that all that money went to help
patients. I suspect that similar applies to every hospital.
Car parking
Date: 9
Oct 2012
FOI Ref No:
919
We are
writing in response to your FOI request dated 21 September.
Taking your
questions in turn;
1.Please
provide us with a list of your Trust’s car parks (including those for each
hospital within the Trust) and the charges for each one.
The car
parks are at both Heatherwood Hospital and Wexham Park Hospital. The charges
are the same for both sites.
Parking
Charges
Time Charge
Up to 1
hour £1.00
Up to 2
hours £2.00
Up to 3
hours £4.00
Up to 5
hours £5.00
Over 5
hours £10.00
Free
parking will be provided for:
· Mothers
of babies in the Neonatal Unit who are coming in frequently to feed;
· One
parent of any child in for Haematology or Oncology treatment;
· Patients
attending hospital on a daily basis for Chemotherapy or other treatment;
· One
parent who has to stay overnight with a child.
Half price
parking will be provided for:
· One
parent of any child in hospital for longer than 48 hours;
· One
relative of any patient in ITU.
In each
case only one validation per patient is allowed (i.e. for the mother or the
father of a child whose stay is longer than 48 hours).
It is
recognised by the Trust that exceptional circumstances outside those listed
above may arise. In these events a judgment will be made by the Head of
Security or the Security Manager in consultation with the ward or departmental
manager.
The
Heatherwood and Wexham Park NHS Foundation Trust follows the Department of
Health (2006) guidance on income generation. Revenue received from car parking
pays for the security services and police within the Trust necessary for the
protection of patients, visitors and staff.
1.Please
also clarify who is responsible for managing each of the car parks; if not the
Trust or individual hospital(s) please give the name of the Company/Individual.
The Trust
manage the car parks but the Trust has contracted CP Plus who is responsible
for the day to day running of the car parks and security
1.Please
clarify when the fees for each car park were introduced.
Patient
parking was introduced in approx 1994/5. Staff parking charges were introduced
in 2011
(section on
previous lower fees edited out by me)
1.Are fees
the same for staff, visitors and patients? If not, please provide a breakdown
of the different charges applicable to those three groups, including details of
any discounts made available to patients, visitors or staff.
Patients
and visitors charges are the same, documented on above (and on the Trust public
website). Any discounts are also as stated above and on the Trust public
website. Staff who are granted car parking permits pay 1% of salary.
1.How much
money has been generated in total, per year, since January 2009 from parking
fees paid by patients, visitors and staff, for using the Trust’s car park(s)?
The revenue
raised from staff parking in 2011-12 was £559k (plus £93K from bus revenue).
The revenue from patient parking was £742k in 2011-12
1.If the
car park is not managed by the Trust or the individual hospital(s), how much of
the total money generated from parking fees paid by patients, visitors and
staff, was paid to the Company/Individual managing the car park?
For
clarity;
Staff
parking fees were spent in the following ways;
£437k of
the money raised from staff car parking permits was spent in the following
ways;
Staffing,
operation and Management of the Travel Plan office
Bus service WP1
Two full time security officers in the car parks
CCTV and
camera maintenance for the staff car parks
Capital works associated with the car parks
e.g. improved lighting and CCTV, staff showers for cyclists, cycle stands,
lining of car parks
Changes to car parking areas associated with
the travel plan
We also
assist staff who sign up for a salary sacrifice bus pass a contribution for
local bus service/routes via the organisation that administers the bus pass
service, so that individuals payments are more closely in line with car parking
charges.
The
differential between what is spent on the above services and what is raised by
way of staff car parking permits is placed in reserve for major capital spends
such as replacement of the barriers systems, re-design to maximise parking
spaces etc, these schemes only occur every few years and we build a fund to pay
for them.
Patient
parking fees were spent in the following ways
The Trust
has a contract with CP Plus to manage security and the car parking on both
sites. Patient parking fees pay for this contract and for additional security
that covers the whole hospital as well as the car park. It also pays for
payment machines and maintenance of car parking barriers etc.
Well I’m sure that cheers us all up.
Neil Harris
(a don’t stop till you drop production)
