THE NHS trust which runs the John Radcliffe and the Churchill Hospitals in Oxford made more than half a million pounds by charging staff for parking last year.

According to NHS figures, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (OUH) raked in £597,540 in the year to March from charges and penalty fines incurred by NHS workers parking across all its sites.

OUH, which also runs the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Headington and the Horton General in Banbury, employs around 12,000 staff.

The trust said all revenue from its parking operation is ploughed back into car park maintenance with any surplus used to improve patient care.

A spokesman for OUH also said it would not consider making staff parking free saying the trust was committed to reducing traffic at its sites.

The spokesman added: “The trust works closely with the Oxfordshire bus companies and Oxfordshire County Council on new routes, offers for staff and initiatives such as bike-friendly buses and demand led transport.

“The trust also has its own dedicated car sharing scheme called OUH Liftshare which enables organised lift sharing by connecting people travelling in the same direction.

“We currently have around 460 active members.”

The trust made a further £2.8 million from parking charges paid by patients and visitors to its sites in the same financial year, bringing the total income from car parking to £3.4 million.

Nationally NHS trusts across England made a combined total of almost £70 million from staff parking charges in 2016/17.

Unite, a union which represents around 100,000 health workers, has slammed the “scandalous” figures, which it said amounted to a “tax on hard-pressed” employees.

National officer for health at Unite, Sarah Carpenter, said: “Such a large figure will take a large chunk out of the gains in the current NHS pay package which saw most staff get a pay rise of 6.5 per cent over the next three years.

“This pernicious trend is replicated by financially squeezed trusts across England - our members are being used as an extra income stream for these trusts.”

The financial pressures placed on NHS staff in Oxfordshire has come under further scrutiny recently with calls for an Oxford weighting to bolster local NHS salaries.

The high cost of living in the area has been largely cited as the main stumbling block as Oxfordshire’s hospitals’ struggle to deal with a recruitment and retention crisis.

Decisions on how much to charge patients, staff and visitors to park at NHS sites are made by the individual trusts.

Across England, almost £157 million was raised from charges incurred by patients and visitors.

The figures represent the gross income earned by the NHS and do not take into account costs for providing car parking.

Patients’ rights campaigners the Patients Association has criticised the existence of parking charges for patients, describing them as “a charge on people who are unwell, levied on them because they are unwell.”

However, chief executive Rachel Power said they were a way for hospitals to generate revenue at a time when they are under “immense” financial pressure.