January 28, 2019 12.10 pm This story is over 62 months old

Lincoln hospital reintroduces parking charges

Visitors will now need to pay after a month of free service

Parking charges will be back in place for Lincoln County Hospital patients from tomorrow after the new system collapsed.

Technical problems, which were causing large queues at payment machines, are said to have been fixed and parking charges will be reinstated on Tuesday, January 29.

As previously reported, United Lincolnshire Health Trust (ULHT) introduced a new automatic number plate recognition system, but they ran into some “teething problems”.

The new system, which came with an increase in charges, resulted in “anger and frustration” for patients who were forced to wait in queues to pay.

While workers fix the parking problems at Lincoln County Hospital, the ULHT board decided to scrap all parking charges in December.

Some claimed that people were abusing the free parking by using it as a ‘park and ride’ service.

Paul Boocock, director of estates and facilities at ULHT, said:  “All of the necessary improvements have been made, including the installation of additional machines, additional lighting and a stronger signal between the ANPR cameras and the payment machines.

“We are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused and would like to thank everyone for their co-operation.”

Parking charges were reintroduced at hospitals in Boston and Grantham earlier this month, but it took longer to fix problems in Lincoln.

Visitors will now need to pay at the end of their stay by entering their car registration at one of the pay machines or by using the good2go website.