Patients to face higher hospital parking charges

People visiting hospitals in Shrewsbury and Telford will have to pay more for parking from next month.

The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust said it was "currently operating in a challenging financial environment, with rising costs requiring difficult decisions to be made about how money is used".

It promised to make improvements to parking and said the cost of the park and ride service to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital would not increase again this year.

Matt Neal, the trust's head of estates and facilities apologised for the increases and said: "We have aimed to keep increases as small as possible and protect the free parking concessions."

From 2 November, most prices will increase by approximately 10 per cent.

The price of a frequent visit concession, which provides 10 visits over a period of three months, will increase from £8.50 to £15.00 from 1 December.

The Shrewsbury park and ride service went up in price from £1 to £2 for a return journey in February, but will remain at that price.

The hospital trust said it would continue to offer free parking concessions to some patients and their relatives.

They include Blue Badge holders, patients receiving renal dialysis or cancer treatment, those visiting the hospital in connection with bereavement and parents of children staying overnight in hospital.

It said the money raised from the parking charges would be spent on the maintenance of the car parks, off-site car parking and the park and ride service, with any surplus being made available to other hospital services.

The trust said it was looking to make better use of the parking space available and had already created additional staff parking at Telford's Princess Royal Hospital.

Last September, it said it was reviewing car parking arrangements there and it said that process would continue.

At the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital it said it had plans to knock down some older buildings to increase the parking capacity.

It also said more spaces should be freed up as construction work there is scaled down.

It encouraged visitors to look at alternative travel options and said more than 2,000 journeys were being made every week on the Shrewsbury park and ride.

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