Last weekend I was catching up on a backlog of industry publications and read an interesting article by Peter Guest in the June 2010 edition of Parking World which reminded me of a related article we recently posted in our blog.
The subject of Peter’s article was Hospital Parking and the on-going discussions about whether it is fair to charge or not. You may be interested to hear that the British Parking Association has actually published a Hospital Parking Charter which can be viewed here of the aims of the Charter, as stated in the PW article are to:
- improve the standards of car park management and customer service
- provide clear signage and well maintained car parks
- provide reasonable parking tariffs
- take best practice advice from relevant professional organisations
- advertise concessions, such as those available to chronically ill patients
- take a flexible approach to parking infringements, etc.
At PCI we strongly support the formalisation of these objectives, particularly in an environment where car park customers are either in physical pain or distress and often both. Parking should not be an additional element of stress and should be managed in such a way that revenue maximisation is the result, not the primary objective of the car park operation.