YORK'S two NHS hospitals charged more than £380,000 for car parking in a year, new figures have revealed.

Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that the annual income in 2004/5 collected in parking fees from York Hospital and Bootham Park Hospital came to £380,026.

York Hospital charges £1.30 for one hour in its car parks - the same as the neighbouring council car park in Union Terrace.

Danny Morgan, director of facilities for York Hospital, said this was by agreement with the council to prevent non-hospital users abusing the system by parking there more cheaply than they could next door.

He said cash made from the fees was put back into maintaining the car parks, mending broken barriers, for example.

Any leftover cash was ploughed back into patient care, with equipment such as wheelchairs and trolleys bought from this source of money in the past.

"We use the money wisely," he said.

Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust collected £302,101 in parking fees during the same period, while Scarborough and North East Yorkshire Health Care NHS Trust made £195,000.

But money made by hospitals from car parking has sparked criticism from Macmillan Cancer Relief, which has said charging cancer patients for parking is "morally wrong".

The organisation has argued that patients undergoing treatment for cancer should be exempt from hospital car parking fees.

Mr Morgan said a whole raft of patients at the hospital were exempt from parking charges.

These included:

Kidney dialysis patients coming to the hospital's renal unit two or three times a week

Regular blood clinic patients who also came to the hospital about twice a week

People coming to the hospital to visit dying loved ones

Visitors of very sick children or babies

Visitors coming to see someone in hospital who had been there for more than three weeks could also ask for a parking permit

Mr Morgan said: "Clearly they (some people) are here for a very special purpose. Nursing staff in that area will make sure their car is not a worry for them.

"We don't behave as though it's a rule book. People make a special case, and we do our very best. We are a compassionate organisation. We're here to help people get across to the hospital.

"There are a lot of distressing illnesses and cancer is certainly one of them. If that particular illness fell into one of those categories (listed above). We do our very best to help patients and their visitors who have distressing situations."

Updated: 09:40 Wednesday, March 29, 2006