Investigating Current Hospital Parking Charges

Hospital parking charges are often something of a contentious issue, with policies to scrap or reduce them regularly found in political parties’ policies. Calls for the dropping of charges are common, along with news stories such as doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers being subject to hundreds and thousands of pounds worth of parking charges each year.

For 2016-17, hospitals in England made a record £174 million in car parking fees, representing a 6% increase from the year before. At Robins and Day, we conducted a survey and sent out various Freedom of Information (FOI) requests for a better insight into hospital parking charges across the UK.

What we did

Based on the above, we wanted to look into how much of an impact hospital parking has on different medical conditions that involve re-occurring hospital visits.

To do this, we did the following:

• Submitted FOI requests to over 50 hospitals and councils to determine the specific costs of parking in different locations.
• Used the above data to determine the cost of parking for five different medical illnesses. This was done by researching the average amount of appointments required for each medical condition multiplied by the average amount of parking time.
• Conducted primary research in order to find out what people’s views on hospital parking are with a range of survey questions.

Survey Results

Firstly, our primary research consisted of asking 500 people a few questions about their habits and opinions on hospital parking. From the results we found that 38% of people think you should pay for hospital parking. Of these, 59% of 18 to 34-year-olds believe you should pay for hospital parking, compared to just 18% of 55 to 64-year-olds. This could be due to younger people being used to paying for such parking all their lives. 

Despite the high parking charges, 80% of people said driving would still be their preferred method of transport when visiting someone in hospital. Hospitals are clearly taking advantage of this demand, especially as they made a record amount from parking charges for 2016-17. Of the rest, only 6.4% said they’d prefer to travel by bus, 5% would walk and 3% get the train.

When asked what the most they’d ever paid for parking when visiting a hospital, 40% said between £1 to £5, while a third claimed it was from £6 to £10. Even though most hospital parking is free in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, 22% of respondents in Edinburgh have paid over £15 in one visit, while 29% in Bristol said they’d paid more than £11. 

Hospital Parking in 2017

Through FOI data we discovered the hospitals that charge the most and least for parking, some of which tied in with the survey results. The most expensive areas for parking in an eight-hour day were:

• London: £15.00
• Glasgow: £13.60
• Leeds: £12.90
• Bristol: £12
• Manchester: £10

Q-Park Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen Hospital charged the highest hourly rate of £3.15, followed by Chelsea and Westminster, Manchester Trafford and Central sites at £3. The cheapest areas for eight hours of hospital parking were:

• Sheffield: £3.70
• Devon: £4.10
• Lincolnshire: £4.60
• Blackpool: £4.75
• West Sussex: £5.35

This is thanks to Blackpool Victoria and Clifton Hospital charging just 60p per hour and West Sussex Southlands £1.30 to keep their respective regions’ averages down. Leeds Hospitals Wharfedale charge just £1.00 per hour too, in stark contrast to £2.90 at Leeds Hospital LGI, so there can be big differences within the same region from hospital to hospital.

Hospitals in London North West experienced the biggest percentage increase in parking charges, growing by £1.90 (25%) for an eight-hour day over five years, followed by Bristol Royal Infirmary which increased by £2.00 (20%). The highest eight-hour parking charge was still found at Chelsea and Westminster though, at a massive £24.

Medical condition vs parking cost

After completing the above research, we then worked out an average parking cost in the UK, before working out the cost impact on different medical conditions.

Our results were quite shocking and revealed the following:

What’s Next?

The results of our research showed that there is a wide diversity across the amount hospitals charge for parking. With the majority of people preferring to drive to visit patients and a surprisingly high percentage thinking people should pay to park, it looks unlikely that much will change in the near future.   

Still, high hospital parking charges are a recurring feature in the national news, so keep checking Robins and Day for the latest news surrounding fresh developments around hospital parking charges.

Image courtesy of iStock.