PARKING charges on Dudley hospital car parks have gone up – just days after it emerged more than £1.5million was made in fees from patients, visitors and staff in the last year.

Charges on all Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust car parks were due to go up from today (Tuesday October 29) but hospital bosses have stressed the "new prices are in line with charges at other local hospitals".

The revised prices - which add an extra 20p to the cost of parking in most cases - come just 12 days after it emerged the income generated by charges on the patient and visitor car parks at Russells Hall Hospital  and The Guest and Corbett Outpatient Centres in Dudley and Stourbridge was £1,066,804 for 2018-19, and £523,939 was generated from staff parking fees.

A statement released by the trust said: "Patient and visitor car park charges have remained unchanged for the past three years. As of October 29, patients will see a small increase to parking charges at the Trust’s three hospital sites.

"The Dudley Group is in a contractual relationship with our Private Finance Initiative (PFI) partners Interserve in the running and funding of our visitor car parks.

"The new prices are in line with charges at other local hospitals."

The trust said Interserve has invested in new pay machines and a new car parking control system to improve traffic flow and ease congestion issues – and Diane Wake, chief executive of the Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The income Interserve generates from parking fees is used to maintain the car parks and carry out necessary works, and to deliver a security service, including 24-hour monitored CCTV.

“The value is from the PFI finance model and is an implied value used to offset the service charges the trust pays the PFI. It’s not an amount the trust directly received."

She said income raised from the Dudley Group owned staff car park at Russells Hall Hospital pays for running costs such as maintenance, security and cleaning - and she added: “Any surplus goes back into patient care.”

The new parking charges for visitors and patients from October 29 will be: free for up to 15 minutes (no change), £2.80 for up to an hour, £3.80 for up to two hours, £4.30 for up to three hours, £4.80 for up to five hours, £5.80 for one visit up to 24 hours.

Previously the prices were: £1.50 for 15 to 30 minutes, £2.60 for 30 minutes to an hour, £3.60 for one hour to 1.5 hours, £4.60 for 1.5 hours to three hours and £5.60 for three hours to 24 hours.

Dudley North MP Ian Austin said he thinks the fees patients and their relatives have to pay are "outrageous" and he added: "I’m very disappointed that they are increasing again.

“Hospitals are under real financial pressure, so the government need to sort this out because it is completely unfair for the government to allow to sick people or their relatives to be charged so much. I have campaigned for years for hospital parking charges to be scrapped and will be raising these figures in Parliament again."

The trust says it provides a limited amount of concessionary cards offering free parking for patients attending the oncology, renal, neonatal and paediatric departments three times a week or more for an extended period.

Value cards are also available at a fixed seven-day fee to visitors, with relatives and friends in hospital, which offer unlimited parking on the visitor car park for seven consecutive days, starting on the day of purchase.