THE parking nightmare for York Hospital staff is set to deepen after council chiefs hiked the cost of a parking permit to £1,000.

York Hospitals NHS Trust says it will not be able to afford the fee for permits to park at Marygate and Foss Bank car parks.

It plans to replace them with permits for the hospital site's parking area. But there are already four times more permits than spaces there, leaving employees scrambling for spaces or looking for alternative parking further away on the city's streets.

Employees and their representatives say the safety of female staff walking to their cars late at night is being put in jeopardy. Staff recruitment is also being affected, they claim.

Lynda Walker, of Wressle, near Selby, who has worked in the hospital's pathology department for six years, said antisocial working hours and living outside York would make using public transport difficult.

She said: "The hospital car park is usually full by 8am, and most of the streets surrounding the hospital are for residents only.

"My hours won't make it feasible to use Park&Ride, so I'm going to have to take pot luck on the streets, but I could have to walk a long way during dark nights to get to my car."

The council has said only ten permits are involved, but Ms Walker said she believed that before the council closed its Union Terrace car park, there had been about 30 permits for NHS staff.

Danny Morgan, Trust director of facilities, would not say what the previous charge had been, but said because of a special discount it was substantially less than the £870 charged to the general public.

Edna Mulhearn, York branch secretary of public service union Unison, said parking at the hospital was a "nightmare".

She said: "There is a chronic problem and it's affecting recruitment as people don't want to work where they can't park."

Alison Sayers, Royal College of Nursing (RSN) representative for York Hospital, said safety was her major concern."

Plans to build a multi-storey visitor car park at the hospital are currently in the final stages of planning. Building work is expected to begin in the summer.

A council spokeswoman said only ten permits were involved, and the prices were being raised as part of recent changes to parking charges across the city.

These changes have included increases in day-time charges and the introduction of evening, night-time and on-street charges.

Updated: 10:52 Tuesday, March 23, 2004