I WAS shocked this week to see that the West Cumberland and Carlisle hospitals have made £1 million from parking charges.

I guess the NHS has to make money however it can these days, but I have had personal experience of how the West Cumberland Hospital car park is managed and it’s not fun.

We’ll come back to me, though. What shocked me most was that the two hospitals charged their staff £718,769 to park at the sites in 2018/19.

That is beyond appalling.

If the hospitals were in the middle of the towns or if all staff lived around the hospitals then you would think it was up to them if they brought their car to work or not.

Neither the West Cumberland Hospital nor the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle is easily accessible and if you have been to either, you would see that staff come from all over the county.

I love the television programme Wanted Down Under, which shows families trying to decide if they want to emigrate to Australia or New Zealand.

On many occasions they are getting in on a nursing visa and facing the prospect of a far better wage than they are paid here.

We should be nurturing our NHS staff – and charging them to go to work is not a good way to go about it!

Oh, by the way, North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust, which is the new trust resulting from the merger of North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust and Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, said that the income generated from staff parking is invested back in hospital services and maintenance.

I am sure that is of great comfort to them!

The remaining income of £225,853 was made from patient and visitor parking.

That is not quite so bad, especially for visitors who are popping into the hospitals for an hour – or it shouldn’t be.

We had a wonderful example of compassion at the West Cumberland a number of years ago. I was quite seriously ill and my husband was visiting me twice a day. A parking warden walked over to him and said he had seen how often Ian was there.

“Put an hour on your ticket and I won’t check it for the rest of the day.”

Compare that to incident number two. I was in for a procedure that should have taken one hour but lasted for three. I put two hours into the parking machine and, funnily, enough. could not just get up and walk out in the middle of the treatment.

I got a ticket. As soon as I got home I rang the company and explained what had happened. I had to email and appeal (great for those without computers).

The appeal was overturned.

I ended up having to harass staff to get confirmation of what had happened before I was finally let off the penalty.

So not only do staff have to pay to park but then they have to waste time filling in forms to help others who have parked too long.

We’ve already paid our NHS taxes and this is just a way of getting more!