'Revised criteria' for staff parking charges at Scarborough Hospital
The Trust that runs Scarborough Hospital says it's after "an awful lot of feedback"
The Trust that runs Scarborough Hospital has decided to change the criteria of its plan to reintroduce staff parking charges after “an awful lot of feedback”.
The York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has revealed that it has revised its planned reintroduction of staff parking charges at its sites in Scarborough, York, and Bridlington after feedback from staff and and a public petition that gathered almost 1,000 signatures.
At a meeting of the Trust’s board on Wednesday, April 26, the organisation’s chief executive, Simon Morritt, said that the planned parking charges would be revised and depending on the distance that staff lived from their place of work, they would be eligible to apply for a parking permit.
Speaking at the meeting, Mr Morrit said: “We have revised the criteria which effectively includes a perimeter around the hospital and if you live outside that, you are eligible to apply for a parking permit.
“We have also introduced an extenuating circumstances panel because there are always individual cases.
“Car parking is so important to the staff in this organisation and it is the issue that clogs the inbox of senior leaders.”
After the meeting, the chair of the board, Alan Downey, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the radius outside the hospitals – which would determine whether staff are eligible to apply for parking permits – would be two miles in Scarborough, five miles in York, and one mile in Bridlington
Earlier this year the Trust announced that it will reintroduce staff parking charges from June 12 after they were suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic, with charges set to be standardised across sites with different rates depending on pay bands.
The reintroduction of charges has been criticised by staff, members of the public, and local councillors who have said that staff already feel “undervalued” and that public transport is not an option for many.
A petition against the reintroduction of the charges was also launched last month and has gathered more than 990 signatures.
The Trust’s chief executive, Mr Morritt, said that the decision to revise the plan came after “a number of discussions with groups of staff”, including in Scarborough.
He said: “It’s only a few months since I reintroduced the chief executive staff surgery and I had a delegation of about 35 staff in Scarborough, all wanting to talk about the parking.”
While the parking charges will not be scrapped, it will allow many staff members to apply for a free parking permit.
The Trust has also introduced automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology across all three sites.
Mr Morrit said “feedback from the local authority” indicated that the ANPR technology was “easing congestion levels” in York because of the “ease of accessing and leaving the multi-storey car park”.
“Certainly, looking out of my window, I haven’t noticed the kind of queues that we saw on almost a daily basis and the technology itself is having an impact,” the chief execeutive told the board.