Parking fines on duty: a national permit scheme is the answer
A local authority bowed to public pressure and introduced parking permits for nurses attending appointments with patients and services users in the community. One community nurse praised the introduction of permits for healthcare workers by Worcestershire County Council as a move that allows colleagues to focus on delivering care, rather than having the stress of incurring parking fines. The article author wants to see a nationwide parking scheme that would relieve nursing and other healthcare of the burden of parking charges and fines.
Nurses and healthcare staff should be made exempt from parking fines incurred while at work, whether while on visits in the community or hospital car parks
Common sense has prevailed in one corner of the country, and let’s hope this example won’t be the last.
A council has introduced a parking permit scheme that will prevent nursing and other healthcare workers from receiving costly parking fines when visiting patients at home.
Worcestershire County Council listened to public pressure when some 440 people signed a petition calling for permits to be issued to verified healthcare professionals making home visits.
Finding a penalty notice after a late-running home visit is an injustice
Any nurse who has ever worked in the community will be fully aware of the frustration of returning to their vehicle to find a penalty ticket stuck to the windscreen because an appointment delivering essential care to a vulnerable person had over-run or been delayed. Fortunately, the good people of Worcestershire are also aware of this injustice and backed a campaign to correct it.
Debbie Handley, a nursing manager in the county, sums up the relief for healthcare professionals who, she says, can now ‘focus on providing care without the added stress of parking fines’.
Worcestershire isn’t the first council to adopt such a scheme – Cornwall and others operate similar arrangements – however, such approaches are far from universal.
Healthcare staff issued with parking fines can, of course, appeal against the notice or ask their employer to reimburse them, but it’s time-consuming bureaucracy in already busy lives, and it has slim chance of success. As we know, prevention is always better than hoped-for cure.
Free parking permits nationwide
Many nursing and other healthcare staff who work in hospitals have similar complaints about parking fines resulting from them working beyond the end of their shifts – and about having to pay to park at work in the first place.
Very few things were better during the pandemic, but free parking for health and social care staff was one, thanks to the government’s temporary national dispensation.
Of course local councils and hospitals organisations are dealing with budget squeeze, but a nationwide parking permit scheme for healthcare staff, at least with concessions and fines exemption, would be fairer for all.
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