NHS hospital workers such as junior doctors, nurses, healthcare assistants, porters and cleaners are the backbone of our healthcare service.  They work long hours and are charged to access hospital onsite parking.  
When working a shift they may enter in the dark and leave in the dark some twelve or more hours later.  They require safe, secure and convenient access to their wards.  

All employees and contractors have to pay for the privilege to park on site.  To add insult to injury, if their designated car parks are full and they take a bay elsewhere, they are given a ticket.  This money, both for the permit and for the fine often comes directly out of their pay.  

Their pay is low and yet the government has announced that these employees and contractors are British key workers.  Critical in the UK fight against the biggest attack on our health in living memory for the vast majority of us.  

I am calling for all parking charges to be suspended - with immediate effect - for all NHS employees and contractors during the Covid-19 pandemic.  Together with the parking charges to be scrapped after the crisis is over.   

Once in work, staff rarely take their entitled breaks and often work longer than their shift length.  Staff driving onsite have enough to worry about, without panicking that their designated employee bays are full due to staff having to work beyond their hours.

They can’t be late for their shift and yet they may often walk through their work doors knowing that they will be fined.  As a result of staff car parking bays being full and having no option but to use an available bay elsewhere onsite.  All of this happens despite the fact that during their shift they may be caring for the sick, maintaining safe hygiene standards or saving patients lives.  All whilst putting their own health on the line.

It is a small price to pay to give NHS workers and contractors free parking access when we are recognising the great service they are providing.  

Please stand with me and support our vital NHS workers and contractors by asking NHS trusts to stop their privately run NCP (or other) car parks from charging staff and prevent them from issuing fines if employee parking capacity is reduced and they need to park elsewhere on site.