Hospital car parking The Which? research
St George's Hospital in Tooting clamped 545 cars over the year.
We sent Freedom of Information requests to 147 Acute Hospital Trusts in England with Accident and Emergency departments.
Each hospital was asked the same questions, including the cost of parking and details of the payment options available, the availability of priority spaces, the number of times they had fine, clamped or towed, and what concessions were available.
The results have been compiled into a map to make it easy to find your local hospital and see how it fared.
The best and the rest
It's great to see that since last year some hospitals have made a real effort to improve their parking provision. To find your nearest hospital, use our interactive map, which will also allow you to email the chief executive of your hospital directly if you have any comments.
Best hospital car park
In joint first place are Royal Preston and Chorley and South Ribble Hospitals, both run by Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
They've shown that it's possible to provide great parking provision for patients and visitors with support for priority patients, no clamping, and a range of options on how to pay for parking.
The hospitals also both achieved the maximum scores for informing consumers on concessionary policies and consulting with them on parking issues.
Most improved hospital car park
St Helier Hospital takes the title for 'most improved' hospital. Last year, they scored poorly on a number of areas including clamping and lack of payment options.
We met them after last year's results and they launched their 'Big Conversation', a consultation to improve their parking.
Using last year's results as a spur for action, they stopped clamping altogether as of June 2010, and introduced new options to make payment much easier for their visitors. Visitors can pay for their parking with debit or credit card rather than cash.
They also scored extremely well (getting the maximum score) on concessions for regular hospital visitors and – as importantly – on telling car park users about those concessions.
Worst hospital car parks
Sadly not all hospitals came up to scratch, leaving many of their visitors confused and stressed when they came to park at the hospitals.
In our investigation, some hospitals stood out:
- University Hospitals of Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust told us that their hospitals had issued a whopping 18,561 tickets.
- St George's Hospital in Tooting was the biggest clamper, putting the clamps on 545 cars over the year.
- For parking charges, we assessed all car parks on the cost for a two hour stay. Top of the rich list was the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, which charges £6 for two hours.
There are many other hospitals that we think need a check-up, and you can see which ones they were by using our interactive map.
We're calling on all hospitals to provide:
- Fair charging systems and flexible payment options
- Support for priority patients
- Clear information and a way for visitors to feed back about their car parks.
You can support us by emailing your hospital to tell them about the car parking campaign.
