By Marjory Inglis, health reporter

FREE PARKING at Ninewells Hospital would cause “absolute chaos,” a health chief has warned.

NHS Tayside chairman Peter Bates spoke out against introducing free parking at hospitals across Scotland when he faced Scottish Health Minister Andy Kerr at the health authority’s annual performance review in Auchterarder earlier this week.

The Scottish Parliament’s health committee has recently been carrying out an inquiry into charging policies for car parking at hospitals and has come under pressure from patients and charities to scrap parking charges—condemned in some quarters as “a tax on illness.”

NHS Tayside’s chief operating officer Gerry Marr told the committee scrapping parking charges at Ninewells would cost the equivalent of 200 hip operations a year, in terms of the hospital taking over the operation of the car park.

It would also cost from £5-£7 million to buy out the private firm that has a contract to operate the car parks. The contract still has over 20 years left to run.

As a cancer patient himself, who attends Ninewells regularly for palliative treatment of an incurable blood cancer, Mr Bates told the health minister during the Auchterarder meeting how recent changes to parking charges at Ninewells were improving access for patients.

He revealed that prior to the changes, he had to arrive for a clinic appointment an hour early to allow time to queue and wait for a parking space close to the hospital.

Like many other patients who attend hospital, Mr Bates’ illness leaves him unable to walk from the further away car parks and a parking spot close to the hospital is an absolute must.

Health chiefs have always said the point of introducing variable rates in the car parks closest to the hospital was to encourage short stay parking and discourage staff parking there all day, freeing up spaces for patients.

Mr Bates told the minister that prior to the changes the situation was so desperate he and his colleagues were forced to act.

“We had to do something about it. As a cancer patient myself, I would always allow an additional hour prior to my appointment to queue to get into one of the car parks close to the hospital. The changes are proving to be enormously successful.”

But he said the health board had given a commitment to monitor the situation closely and review the position after six months.

“I would publicly give you (the health minister) a commitment if we have got it wrong, or made mistakes, we will change it.”

However, he clearly believes charging is absolutely necessary and if changes are made in future it is likely to be to the operational system. Charges are here to stay.

“There has been so much publicity in relation to ‘Let’s have free parking.’ There is no such thing as free parking. In fact free parking on the Ninewells site would result in absolute chaos. That is not my judgment alone.

“That is the judgment of the car park operators and the site manager.”