VISITORS TO Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, are facing a 10p hike in the standard charge to park on the site, writes Marjory Inglis, health reporter.

Around 6000 vehicles a day visit the hospital’s car parks, and for the vast majority of drivers that means feeding the pay and display machine at every visit.

Now Vinci Park, the private company that runs the car parks, has applied to NHS Tayside to raise the standard charge from £1.50 to £1.60 per visit.

The new charge will be brought in on December 1. At the same time the monthly charge for a staff fob that gives access to barrier-operated car parks will rise from £23.10 to £24.10.

Site manager Brian Main said there had been no increase for 27 months. The contract between the private company and the health authority linked increases to inflation and was rounded up or rounded down to the nearest 10p.

He confirmed that the 10p increase would be applied from December 1.

“The review of the charge is in line with the contract conditions,” said Mr Main.

“The contract allows the contractor to review the charges annually and the way in which the charge is reviewed is set out in a very specific formula. A key factor is inflation.”

He said the “pass through”—the volume of vehicles parking on the site—was also taken into consideration, when reviewing the charge.

Mr Main said the formula produced a result that gave a “per visit” charge in fractions of a penny. Last year there was no increase as the results were too low to round up to another 10p, but the calculations over the last 27 months gave the basis for the new increase.

Changes introduced over the summer, that limited parking to four hours in car parks closest to the hospital, had been successful, he added.

The queues of cars waiting for a space had gone.