Car parking meters at both Ashford and St. Peter’s are an essential part of the parking programme. At both sites they provide funding to pay for the upkeep of the car parks, and to employ security patrols to ensure that patients and visitors vehicles are safe, while they visit the hospitals, as well as supporting patient care.

The total amount of money raised by the parking machines across both hospitals was in the region of £594,000 in 2004/05 and £734,000 in 2005/06.   We estimate that income from parking charges in 2006/07 will be around £775,000.   

The charges are:

·     Up to 2 hours - £2.00

·     Up to 3 hours - £2.50

·     Up to 4 hours - £3.00

·     Up to 24 hours - £5.00

·     Weekly permit - £10.00

The Trust has not raised car parking charges for the last two years.   There are no plans at this stage to increase the charges although this will need to be reviewed later in 2007.

The Trust took over the management of the car parks from an external company, in February 2005.    The income from parking charges has increased as a result improved management of car parking and from measures such as:

·     clamping down on staff parking in ‘pay and display’ spaces which has meant more spaces open to the public;

·     reducing machine breakdown times, meaning the pay and display machine’s are out of order for less time.

Around 50% of the money raised each year goes back into running the car parks and other transport initiatives. This includes upkeep of the car parks; car parking attendants and security patrols; maintenance of the parking machines including the intercom ‘help points’; the running of the ‘Hospital Hopper’ inter-site bus service; subsidised travel via the Peter Bus network; and other transport initiatives.

The rest of the money goes directly to help pay for new equipment, redecoration, maintenance, new staff, cleaning, new transport initiatives, and even building work like the currently proposed ‘deck’ over the Outpatients car park.   The Trust announced late last year that the creation of the deck over Car Park One was going ahead and Runnymede Borough Council recently granted planning permission.   It is expected that work on the ‘deck’ will start later in 2007.    During the course of the year the Trust is also planning to put in barrier controls and ‘pay on foot’ arrangements to improve car parking management.      

Ian Mackenzie, Director of Performance, Information and Facilities comments: “I am confident that our parking charges are not unreasonable.   If we didn’t charge for parking we would have to take the money from somewhere else and that might affect the level of patient care we are able to offer.   We also have a duty to encourage patients and visitors to help reduce our ‘carbon footprint’.  Charging for parking enables us to support other forms of transport.”