Paying to park means paying to work
Intended for healthcare professionals
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Paying to park means paying to work

Flavia Munn Editor, Nursing Standard

When it comes to persuading nurses to stay in the workforce, every staff concession or benefit counts.

Nursing Standard. 37, 6, 5-5. doi: 10.7748/ns.37.6.5.s1

Published: 01 June 2022

And, boy, do we need those incentives right now, in the absence of a decent pay rise and with burnt out staff leaving the register in droves. Among reasons given by the 25,000-plus nurses who departed last year were not feeling appreciated and valued – and, of course, the impact of the pandemic.

In the context of this exodus and the rising cost of living, the decision to withdraw free car parking for hospital staff in England is especially cruel and nonsensical. Is nurses’ work any easier or less important now, as they seek to clear the huge care backlog that resulted from the pandemic, while continuing to treat COVID-related illnesses and struggling with staff absences and shortages?

This is a perverse way to recognise and reward nurses, many of whom isolated from their families as they carried on working, treating people with a lethal virus while equipped with inadequate personal protective equipment. This decision, announced in England by health and social care secretary Sajid Javid, may seem like a way to claw back cash, but it is plain shortsighted.

It could be the final straw for exhausted and demoralised staff who are struggling to make ends meet. Parking charges, coupled with rising fuel prices and stagnant mileage allowances, will mean many nurses are effectively paying to do their jobs.

Some staff are fighting back, with hundreds of workers at Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust making a collective grievance over the decision to reintroduce parking fees at their hospital.

In Scotland and Wales, parking at NHS hospitals continues to be free, and has been so at most sites for years. In Northern Ireland, these charges are set to be scrapped by 2024.

The government talks about levelling up, yet has put a levy on underpaid nursing staff, making them worse off than before the pandemic. No one is clapping now.

See news, page 7

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