Campaigners call for hospital to reverse parking charge decision

Southport Labour has called upon the local hospital trust to rethink a decision to reintroduce parking charges at their sites in the town and Ormskirk.

The charges will come back into force from December 1st it’s been announced by Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust, after spending £325,000 on a high-tech automatic number plate recognition camera parking system in the summer.

A small number of groups such as relatives of patients at end of life and blue badge holders will be exempt from the charges, though the latter will first have to validate their badge with the hospital trust.

The fees were suspended last March during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic but the move to bring them back appears “premature” and should be delayed, a Southport Labour spokesperson explained:
“Parking charges at hospitals are already highly contentious, this though just seems a very inappropriate time for the local hospital trust to reintroduce them.”

“The charges were halted when the pandemic struck and yet are now being reintroduced when it is still very much with us, so this seems rather premature.”
“We will still be in the high alert category locally when this latest lockdown ends and we haven’t even got through the winter yet with the

increased risk that poses.”
“After a decade of NHS underfunding, we understand the financial pressure the trust feels but ask it to rethink this decision and postpone reintroducing charges, at least until the current crisis has significantly eased.”