By Marjory Inglis, health reporter

A TAYSIDE health chief has confirmed it would cost more than £500,000 a year for car park maintenance at Ninewells Hospital to be undertaken by his own staff.

Gerry Marr, NHS Tayside’s chief operating officer, is helping to prepare a report for the Scottish Government on options for terminating or varying the terms of the contract with the private firm that currently runs car parking on the Ninewells site.

The contract between Vinci Park and the health authority still has 20 years to run, but Scottish Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon wants to know whether there is any way the contract could be bought out or charges limited or reduced during the remaining years of the contract.

She has announced abolition of hospital parking charges from January 1, except on sites where car parks were built under the private finance initiative (PFI) and contractors recoup their costs and make a profit through charging drivers to park.

In a letter to Dundee-based MSP Marlyn Glen, Mr Marr confirmed the cost of providing car park maintenance in-house at Ninewells would be more than £500,000 a year.

Mr Marr has always insisted there is no such thing as free parking. More than two years ago, he told the Scottish Parliament’s Health Committee that providing free parking would mean cash would be diverted from patient care.

At the time he equated the annual cost of running the car parks to the cost of 200 major hip operations.

More recently Ms Glen posed 30 questions to Ms Sturgeon after the health secretary said it would cost “tens of millions of pounds” to buy-out the PFI contract. Mr Marr previously told the health committee he estimated it would cost around £10 million.

Ms Glen, who has been in correspondence with Ms Sturgeon and Gerry Marr, has been frustrated in her attempts to get answers to her questions seeking clarification on how costs of a buy-out were calculated.

Ms Glen said yesterday that, “At first we were told emphatically that it ‘would cost tens of millions of pounds’.

“Now this certainty has been watered down to ‘it is understood that this may be in the order of tens of millions of pounds’.

“Ms Sturgeon stated that NHS Tayside had ‘suggested’ in discussion that the cost of ending the contract may be in the order of tens of millions of pounds. However, when I wrote to NHS Tayside asking for details about this discussion, I did not receive an answer to this question.

“I have written to Ms Sturgeon again asking her to provide evidence for her statement to the Scottish Parliament that the cost of the buy-out ‘would be tens of millions of pounds’.”

In a letter to Ms Glen, Mr Marr said there was no termination clause in the contract with Vinci Park and a buy-out would have to be negotiated and involve recompense for the PFI-built multi-story car park.

“At the Public Petitions Committee I was asked if there was an estimate of what the likely cost of this would be and my response indicated no more than a basic estimate of the possible cost, which I gave as ‘in the region of £10 million’,” stated Mr Marr.

“This was based purely on the known asset value of the construction (around £4 million), plus a basic estimate of the trading profits over the remaining 20 years of the contract,” he added.

“In the event of the contract being bought out, NHS Tayside would clearly have to maintain management of the car parking arrangements and the in-house provision of the car park services would indeed be a new additional cost to NHS Tayside.

“Under in-house provision of car park services at Ninewells, NHS Tayside broadly estimates that the full operational cost including security and maintenance would be around £500,000-plus per annum.”