Revealed: Stormont set to scrap free car parking for NHS staff by end of month

The News Letter learned the DoH does not intend to extend the scheme or as some suggest, make it a permanent policy, beyond the end of July when it submitted specific questions to the DoH on Wednesday morning.

"On March 24 2020 Minster [Robin] Swann announced that he would reimburse car parking charges incurred for all staff within the health and social care sector for a period of three months, to acknowledge the hard work and the long and often anti-social hours they were working at this time on our behalf," a DoH spokesperson said.

The spokesperson went on to say that the DoH's policy on car parking "is to recover the cost of providing car parks across the Health Estate".

"Charging for car parking on hospital sites where space is limited is an effective mechanism to creating churn in the utilisations of spaces, which helps to ensure that spaces are available for patients and visitors," the spokesperson explained.

The DoH spokesperson also suggested that if the scheme was to continue it would be at the expense of funding "patient care".

"In addition, if charging were to stop, the revenue raised to meet the cost of the provision and maintenance of car parking would similarly cease, ultimately reducing the amount of money available to fund patient care."

The scheme remains in place until the end of the month for any health and social care staff who pay for car parking via their salaries will see that an adjustment has been made for the three month period May to July 2020.

However, the scheme has already ended for all staff who pay using parking machines - they could only apply for refunds for the period from April to June.

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