Staff at QA Hospital pay £656,639 to park

Last year medics and workers at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Queen Alexandra Hospital in Cosham, paid £656,639.

It comes as a list has been compiled of spending on parking at the nation's hospitals.

Patients and visitors' charges are not included in the list for QA as that cash goes to Carillion under the private finance initiative.

Staff at University Hospital Southampton paid £1,015,081 last year, out of a total of £3,366,770 spent in the car park.

NHS hospitals are making more money than ever from car park charges, with more than half charging disabled visitors and making thousands every year in fines, an investigation has found.

Hospitals across England made more than £120 million from charging patients, staff and visitors for parking in the last year, up 5% on the year before and rising year on year, according to data collected by the Press Association.

Some 120 NHS trusts across England were asked to give figures on parking charges and fines under the Freedom of Information Act, with 89 providing responses.

Overall, NHS trusts netted £120,662,650 in 2015/16 in car park charges, up from £114,873,867 the year before, the study found.

Some 27 trusts provided data on parking fines, showing they made £2,300,208 in fines over a four year period. In 2015/16 alone, £635,387 was made from fining patients, visitors and staff on hospital grounds.

The investigation also found that almost half of all NHS trusts charge disabled people for parking in some or all of their disabled spaces.