Dorset County Hospital made £700,000 from parking fees and charges last year

Figures released by the NHS show the Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust trust raked in £291,060 in the year to March from charges and penalty fines incurred by NHS workers parking across all its sites.

The figures also reveal the trust made a further £422,670 from parking charges paid by patients and visitors to its sites in the same financial year.

This brought their total income from car parking to £713,740.

A union has branded the figures ‘scandalous’ - but DCH said the income is used for maintaining the car parks, meaning this does not have to come out of funds used for patient care.

Sarah Carpenter, national officer for health at Unite, said: “It is a scandal that NHS trusts in England have pocketed nearly £70m from staff car parking charges.

“Such a large figure will take a large chunk out of the gains in the current NHS pay package which saw most staff get a pay rise of 6.5 per cent over the next three years.

“This pernicious trend is replicated by financially squeezed trusts across England - our members are being used as an extra income stream for these trusts.

“We would like a situation where dedicated NHS staff, who don’t earn a fortune, don’t have to pay to park their cars to go to work to look after the sick, the vulnerable and the injured 365 days a year.”

A spokesperson for Dorset County Hospital said: “Charging for parking means we can use that money for ongoing costs such as maintaining the car parks themselves and maintenance of the grounds. If we didn’t have that income we would have to take the money away from patient care for those costs.

“We have dedicated parking areas for staff on site and recently reconfigured the spaces to make it easier for both staff and the public to park at the hospital.

“We encourage our staff to use public transport to get to work if they can.

“Many of our staff already ride to work and we are about to increase the number of pods to enable more to do so.”