Hospital car parking campaign - we need your help

There should be a consistent hospital car parking policy for the whole country. I'm fortunate, as my blue badge allows me to have free parking at my local hospital. If I didn't have it, I'd be able to claim for my travelling expenses but not to park, which could mount up. When I had to attend every day for radiotherapy, I didn't have a blue badge. It got quite expensive.

I had neaqrly 7 weeks radiotherapy treatment at Southend General Hospital and the parking was free. You took your ticket on entry to the carpark, handed in to the clinic and then pressed the help button on way out to give your name and say you have just been to radiotherapy, when security would then lift the exit barrier for you. Excellent.

Hi, I'm in the campaigns team at Macmillan, thanks for leaving your comments, it's really helpful for our campaign and our consultation response. On another point raised by JBE, I just wanted to clarify that in England and Wales people with cancer or getting treatment for the effects of cancer or its treatment are entitled to free prescriptions, so if you are in England or Wales please ask your GP or oncology clinic for an exemption form. Prescription charges are being phased out in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Thanks again for all your comments on car parking, they are really helpful, so keep them coming.

My main centre for treatment, surgery and chemotherapy, was Worcestershire Royal Hospital, along with 25 sessions of radiotherapy at Cheltenham.

I fully support the campaign for free parking for patients and carers. WRH has concessionary parking for longterm patients and carers, whilst parking is free at Cheltenham for radiotherapy patients.

However, freedom from parking charges is entirely useless if the actual provision / management of car parking spaces is inadequate, as any user of the WRH and Cheltenham sites will confirm.

I was employed at the old Worcester Royal Infirmary, and participated in the design process of the PFI funded WRH. The parking issue was flagged early in the design process, but it is my understanding that on site parking was limited as part of the planning consent, due to nonsensical 'green' transport policies emanating from Westminster. We are in a rural environment, where more than 50% of the work force and users do not have access to adequate public transport.

Thank you all for your stories, please do keep them coming, it is really helpful in our response to the consultation. There are a lot of different problems surrounding hospital car parking, but it is clear from the amount of support we have received over the last few days that it is a HUGE issue and one that needs to be addressed. As part of the consultation we are encouraging people to email the Government directly with their stories of hospital car parking.

You might be interested to know that as a result of our campaign Gloucestershire Hospital Trust has announced free parking for cancer patients at all hospitals. We think this is a fantastic achievement so thank you for supporting our campaign. Please do encourage people to send their stories to the Government, post their stories here, play our game and sign our pledge, it really does make a difference. We have had almost 1000 new signatures in the past 3 days, which is amazing.

I will keep you posted on our consultation response.