By Marjory Inglis, health reporter

A Tayside health boss said building another multi-storey car park at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee was a possibility.

But Murray Petrie, chairman of NHS Tayside’s delivery unit committee, questioned who would pay.

“They are not cheap to build and we certainly don’t have the money for that,” he said.

Last week, Mr Petrie and his colleagues on the board of NHS Tayside made the controversial decision to vary prices for parking at Ninewells, introducing charges of up to £15 for stays of over seven hours in car parks five and six closest to the hospital.

However, they insisted no one needed to pay more than the current standard charge and the £15 was intended to act as a “disincentive” for those using spaces closest to the hospital for long stays.

In future car parks five and six will have four-hour maximum stays for £1.50, with the heftier charges being imposed for longer stays. But patients have been assured if a hospital appointment lasts longer than four hours, the additional charges will be waived. Over 2000 other spaces on the site will remain at the standard charge for a single visit with no time limit.

At the meeting of the board that approved the parking alterations, which included introducing charging for the disabled and those attending A&E, Mr Petrie said he did not believe creating more spaces on the site was an option.

Asked to expand on that statement yesterday, Mr Petrie said costs and traffic implications would be the stumbling blocks.

“Yes, you could build another multi-storey car park on number nine (the car park furthest away from the hospital on the other side of the road from the existing multi-storey car park),” said Mr Petrie. “But the first question is how does that get funded?

“As soon as you build it, whoever builds it needs a return on their money.”

He said he was not involved in the operational side of the car parks so didn’t know the “profitability” of building and operating another multi-storey.

The Ninewells car park, opened seven years ago, was built at a cost of £3.5 million under a private finance initiative.

While the revenue from the car parks is not made public due to commercial confidentiality, the private contractor running the car parks gathers in thousands of pounds every day.

Even if all spaces on the site were used only once a day, the operators would be collecting 2400 standard charges of £1.50—a total of £3600.

“I am not interested in profitability,” said Mr Petrie. “What does interest me is making sure patients and carers can get to hospital and staff have a sensible way of getting there as well.”

Mr Petrie said experience elsewhere was that making parking easier and relatively cheap “dragged” more cars in.

“I am not sure the road structure would take much more but I’m not an expert on that. I think a lot of developments, such as building schools, are required by the planning authority to have a traffic impact assessment.

A Dundee City Council spokesman said efforts had been made to encourage bus use.

Any application for a new multi-storey would be dealt with in the usual way, and this would include a traffic impact assessment.