By Marjory Inglis, health reporter

DISABLED PEOPLE attending Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, will fund free parking for “compassionate” visitors.

The money they feed into the parking machines will by-pass the car parks’ commercial operators and create a cash pot to fund “free fobs” that will give selected patients access to parking without paying.

Withdrawal of free parking for patients attending the accident and emergency department will also generate extra cash to extend the compassionate parking scheme.

Ninewells site manager Brian Main said nursing staff would have the authority to issue the free fobs to patients with serious illness requiring regular treatment or traumatised visitors keeping a bedside vigil that could go on for weeks.

For the first time ever disabled people and those attending A&E will lose the right to free parking at the hospital, following NHS Tayside’s controversial decision last week to introduce measures to improve management of parking on the site.

The parking review, conducted by former Tayside Chief Constable Bill Spence, took place partly in response to complaints from cancer patients and others who required to attend hospital frequently for life- saving treatment and ended up paying huge amounts in car park charges over the course of treatment.

The review group called for an extension to the compassionate fob system, but gave no indication how many people would benefit.

At the moment there are just 25 “compassionate fobs” for the whole hospital where hundreds of new patients are diagnosed with cancer every year and around 130 patients with kidney failure require to attend three or four times a week for dialysis.

They are not “free” fobs, though the patients and visitors who use them do not pay to park.

“We pay for 25 compassionate fobs,” said Mr Main. “I get invoiced every month for them” (by Vinci Park, the commercial company which has a 30-year contract to operate the car parks at Ninewells).

Mr Main said the compassionate fob scheme would be extended “significantly.” Details of how the scheme will work in practice have still to be worked out and the new charging arrangements can only be put in place after detailed discussions have taken place with Vinci Park and contract variations have been agreed.

He reminded the public that the decision to introduce charges of £15 for a stay of over seven hours affected only two car parks closest to the hospital. There were over 2000 other spaces on the site that would remain at £1.50 a visit without a time limit.