Ealing Hospital “waiving charges” to visitors after its new pay and display car park machines fail to work

Visitors attending medical appointments or seeing patients at Ealing Hospital will be able to park for free after the Trust that runs the hospital told EALING.NEWS that due to faulty pay and display machines it is “waiving charges” while they remain out of service.

Over the past few weeks, visitors to Ealing Hospital, part of the London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust (LNWH), have discovered three new pay and display machines have been installed. But when visitors went to use them, the machines displayed a “NOT IN USE” message.

The car park, which is managed by Apcoa Parking, charges £2.90 for 1 hour, £5.40 up to 2 hours, £5.90 up to 3 hours, £6.80 up to 5 hours, £10.30 up to 8 hours and £13.00 for up to 24 hours to park a vehicle at the hospital.

On Thursday (4 May 2023), all three machines were out of order and visitors to the hospital spoke of their frustration as no information about the faulty machines was provided.

Jack who arrived for an appointment told EALING.NEWS: “We came here on time but spent over 20 minutes walking around and trying to find out how to  make payment but none of the machines were working.  There are no messages either to tell visitors what to do. I can’t keep on waiting around so I’ve parked and if I get a ticket I will be raising this as a complaint.”

A spokesperson for Ealing Hospital told EALING.NEWS that it recently installed new equipment: “The pay and display machines at Ealing Hospital were recently replaced given their age.”

The spokesperson added that pay and display parking enforcement will be waived until they fix the problem: “Two of the pay and display machines are faulty and should be repaired next week. We will be waiving charges until then and apologise for any inconvenience caused to visitors.”