Hospital car park charges to stay as ban paused: Scrapping fees would leave £7m hole in health budget, says Minister Mike Nesbitt
Hospital car park charges are now likely to stay until 2029, after Health Minister Mike Nesbitt put a move to ban them on hold.
Scrapping fees as planned, the minister said, would leave a £7m hole in the health budget at a time of “unprecedented funding challenges”.
Car parks at hospitals across Northern Ireland were due to go free of charge in nine weeks’ time, but Mr Nesbitt now says fees have to stay for at least three more years.
The ban on paid-for parking has been in the works since 2022, but the minister now wants it to be put on hold until May 12, 2029 – though he said fees could be scrapped earlier if the financial circumstances are right.
Today he introduced a bill that’s to be fast-tracked through the Northern Ireland Assembly, allowing the Department of Health to set a new date for axing car park charges. It’s being done, he said, due to severe financial pressures facing the health system and should help ensure funding for frontline services is prioritised.
He stated: “Health and social care trusts have been working over the past four years to implement the Hospital Parking Charges (NI) Act 2022. The necessary infrastructure is expected to be in place, and the act is currently due to commence on May 12.
“However, the Department of Health is facing unprecedented funding challenges in the coming years.
“The removal of car parking charges would result in lost revenue of approximately £7m per annum. If the act comes into operation as planned, this will reduce the funding available for the delivery of frontline health and social care services in [the coming financial year] and beyond, at a time when a significant funding gap is already anticipated.
“Ordinarily, primary legislation should undergo full assembly scrutiny, with the committee stage forming a key element of this process. However, in this case, compelling grounds exist for using accelerated passage to minimise the risk of charges being abolished temporarily and then reintroduced.
“I am clear that this is not an indefinite deferral. It remains my intention that charges should be removed when the time is right. That is why the bill also stipulates that the revised operational date must be no later than May 12, 2029, representing a maximum delay of three years.”
Large sums of money have already been spent by health trusts on new equipment for hospital car parks, including cameras that record the number plates of arriving vehicles.
The free system was to have seen people given a maximum stay time of three and a half hours, though extensions were to be available for “valid reasons”.
Last week DUP health spokesperson Diane Dodds said there have been serious concerns about the impact on the health service from axing parking fees.
She told the BBC: “At a time when budgets are tight, at a time when we don't have all of the services that we need, then I think it’s important the minister reviews it and decides what he wants to do in relation to hospital car parking charges.
“The health service itself has been doing an enormous amount of planning in relation to [scrapping fees] but it is a matter of the cost to the health service of all that planning and the lost revenue.”