Hospital visitors across Britain were hit with approximately £13.3 million in parking fines within the 2015/16 financial year.
This has been revealed in statistics uncovered by the parking website YourParkingSpace, following a Freedom of Information request. Among the figures, it was found that 159,000 parking tickets were issued at hospital car parks during the 2015/16 financial year.
Ten per cent of these tickets were appealed against and two-thirds of those appeals were successful. The chances of successfully appealing a hospital parking ticket varied wildly in different regions, with a 100 per cent success rate in some but a success rate below ten per cent in others.
Some NHS trusts were also more heavy-handed with issuing fines than others. While certain trusts handed out no fines at all in the previous financial year, some trusts handed out over 12,000 penalty charges.
The managing director of YourParkingSpace, Harrison Woods, said: “It isn’t right that visitors who are often attending hospital for treatment or to visit sick relatives are being hit with fines of up to £100.
“It’s added worry at a time that is often already very stressful for patients and their families. The research, however, shows that if you feel that you have been unfairly ticketed while parking at a hospital it can pay to appeal.”
Woods proposed that introducing technology that enables motorists to book parking in advance could provide hospitals with an ideal solution to drastically reduce the amount of parking fines they hand out.
