The Hospital Parking Report 2024 underscores a troubling trend in England’s healthcare system: the escalating cost of hospital parking.
Hospital parking charges in England have long been a source of contention being described both as a ‘tax on the sick’ and a burden on those caring for them. While Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have scrapped them completely, in England, the issue remains very much alive. The 2019 Tory manifesto promised to end these “unfair hospital parking charges,” yet five years later the situation has actually got worse. The latest NHS estates data reveals a whipping 50% increase in parking revenue totalling £145.9 million in 2023, up from £97.9 million in 2022. Our exclusive report, "Hospital Parking Report 2024", delves into this issue.
There is huge variation between trusts in how much the generate from parking. The UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS COVENTRY AND WARWICKSHIRE NHS TRUST stands out with the highest revenue at £5,197,810, a stark 45% higher than the UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS OF DERBY AND BURTON NHS FOUNDATION TRUST, which collected £3,583,196.
Some trusts had very significant year on year hikes. LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST, for example, had a rise of £1,588,404 in 2023 following the reversal of its COVID parking rules. Similarly, the UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL OF NORTH MIDLANDS NHS TRUST saw an increase of £1,501,783, bringing its total income to a massive £2,021,709.
We've put together the parking revenues for each trust:
Our analysis goes even more granular, comparing the parking charges at 251 of England’s largest hospitals.
The data reveals that hospitals like ST PETER’S HOSPITAL, ASHFORD HOSPITAL, and EAST SURREY HOSPITAL are among the most expensive for short-term parking, charging up to£4.50 for stays of up to one hour. This high cost of short-duration parking raises questions about accessibility to healthcare for the poorest in our society.
We have broken down each of the hourly parking rates at each of the 251 hospitals we investigated in the following table:
Sources:
We compiled trust-level data from NHS’s Estates Return information and hospital-level data from each individual site or associated third-party parking provider. A full list of these sources can be found in column N here.