Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure that hospitals follow the updated guidelines on hospital car parking charges.

The Department of Health published new National Health Service patient, visitor and staff car parking principles on 23 August 2014. These principles, widely welcomed by a range of charities and organisations representing patients’ interests, made it clear that NHS trusts should publish:

- their parking policy;

- their implementation of the NHS car parking principles;

- financial information relating to their car parking arrangements; and

- summarised complaint information on car parking and actions taken in response.

In line with our policy of making all key information transparently available to patients, our expectation is that this information will be displayed prominently on trust websites so that patients and the public can hold the NHS locally to account where unfair parking charges and practices remain in place.

In addition, we will be collecting information about NHS compliance with these principles via the next round of the Patient Led Assessments of the Care Environment data collection and the results will be published so that patients can identify those trusts who are falling short.