Staff car parking charges reintroduced at CHS on 1 May
For more than a year, car parking here has been free for staff. It was back in March 2021 we paused our car parking charges, in line with nationwide concessions to support people through the pandemic.
Last week, the Government announced that the stage of the pandemic is changing and therefore, from today, Trusts will no longer receive central funding to cover their income lost from free parking .
This means that Trusts, including ours, need to reintroduce car parking charges. This money is vital. It’s used to run the parking bays, their security and their systems self-sufficiently – otherwise there really would be no alternative than to divert money away from our patient services. Other Trusts up and down the country will, sadly, be making the same choice.
1 May reintroduction
We have taken the decision not to start it from now, but to instead delay the change until 1 May - so that you have time to plan for it.
We are working through some of the finer details and can already confirm that the daytime parking charge remains at £3 Monday to Sunday, with the annual permit charge or night permit costing £30.
Both night time and day time permit holders can also park for free in staff bays from 5pm to 8:45am on Monday to Sunday.
If your permit is due to expire, we’ll send reminders about renewing as usual.
There is a long waiting list for parking permits * – and anyone living closer than 4 miles from work can only get a day time permit if their application is approved by the appeals panel. Anyone can apply for a night time permit.
A change to monitoring
We’re also launching automatic number plate recognition so, if you aren’t parking with the right permit, you now won’t receive to an envelope on your windscreen – but will instead receive a notification through the post. It’ll save over 5,000 plastic bags a year and allow our parking officers to keep doing their important job, without that part of their day where they inevitable face a frustrated person who’s received a penalty notice.
We'll update The LINK with more information and new application forms forms shortly. Background and contact details are here .
* The existing and ongoing policy helps us priotiise applications by people's need, based on the following criteria:
- Category One – Staff who are registered as disabled and students attending a recognised full time programme of study at CUH who live further than four miles from CUH by route as defined by TfL travel planning. Permits and parking charges are free of charge
- Category Two – CHS staff:
- Who are Community Midwives. Only Community Midwives are authorised to park for up to three hours within three designated ‘Community Midwife’ bays.
- Who are required to use their vehicle to attend other NHS Trusts or CHS sites for business or emergency clinical purposes.
- Whose shifts end after 22:00 at least three times per week
- Category Three – CHS staff living further than four miles from CUH (by route as defined by TfL travel planning) working clinical and non-clinical shifts between 7am – 10pm, weekdays or weekends
- Categories Four & Five - NHS staff and non-directly employed NHS/contracted staff working weekday nights and any weekend shifts. This permit is open to all staff, regardless of travel distance and allows them to park from 17:00 through to 08:45 the following morning and all day at weekends.