NHS staff will no longer be able to park at hospitals for free once the coronavirus pandemic begins to ease, according to the UK government.
At the start of the crisis back in March, Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that the government would cover the costs of parking for NHS staff who were "going above and beyond every day" at hospitals around the country.
However the Department of Health have now said that free parking will soon be no longer available to those workers, except for "key patient groups and NHS staff in certain circumstances".
No official deadline has been set for when the charges will start again, but the British Medical Association (BMA) has that nothing will change for the time being, stressing that reintroducing charges while the virus is still being fought would be "a rebuff to the immense efforts of staff across the country and the sacrifices they have made to keep others safe."
Edward Argar of the Department of Health said that the free parking initiative "cannot continue indefinitely" and added that the government was looking into how long it could keep offering it for.
He said: "Implementation of this commitment has been on hold whilst the NHS has been managing the Covid-19 pandemic and devoting its hospital parking capacity to staff and other facilities necessary for managing the pandemic."
See More: Coronavirus, NHS Staff, Nhs, Parking
