A&E nurse Emma Chapman has been fined repeatedly for parking for more than 12 hours in the Queen’s Hospital staff car park (Picture: Suzanne Ireland)
Strangers rushed to pay a nurse’s £40 parking fine after she worked an “excruciating and upsetting” 13-hour night shift.
Emma Chapman, 40, received her second fixed penalty notice this week from Havering Council – despite paying £12.50 to park.
According to Emma, who works as a senior emergency nurse at Queen’s Hospital, her colleagues are also regularly fined.
This is apparently because their parking tickets are valid for a maximum of 12 hours – despite hospital staff often working 13-hour shifts.
But when nurse Lee’s husband posted the parking fine on LinkedIn, kind-hearted strangers rushed to help cover the cost.
Emma told Metro.co.uk: “When I got home after getting the ticket again I was in tears because I was so angry that this kept happening.
“After a busy shift, treating patients in the corridors and feeling discouraged because you can’t provide the proper care they need, to walk out and see a parking ticket on your car feels so demotivating.
“I was amazed by the reaction on LinkedIn because in the past I felt like they didn’t listen to me.”
Strangers rushed to pay Emma’s fine after her husband Lee posted a picture of it on social media (Image: Lee B/LinkedIn) She had an ‘excruciating and upsetting’ 13-hour night shift (Image: Suzanne Ireland)
Emma warned that hospital staff are struggling to cover the cost of their parking fines as many are already working extra shifts to help with the rising cost of living.
“Obviously A&E and ITU nurses don’t have the right to strike but we need higher wages to cover the cost of the bills and I’m even taking extra shifts so I can,” she said.
“To see afterwards that I have a parking fine, it’s really disheartening because I’m losing a good few hours to cover the cost of them. For cleaners and porters, it means even more to them.
Emma is now asking her local council to recognize that nurses’ shifts are longer than the maximum parking time.
“They only let people park for up to 12 hours while we work 13-hour shifts and I can’t just drop everything to move my car because I might have an emergency,” she explained.
Emma says the council needs to watch out for hospital staff working more than 12 hours (Image: Suzanne Ireland)
“We’re also trying to retain staff at the moment, especially as we have a lot of agency staff and if they get fined it won’t help.
“I think the council needs to be more careful that we are working shifts longer than the maximum duration of the ticket.”
Leader of Havering Council, Councilor Ray Morgon, told the Havering Daily: “We appreciate all the amazing work our nurses do and will take immediate action on this.
“We will conduct a review and see how we can resolve this situation for our nurses.”
Emma said she broke down in tears after finding out she had been fined after a difficult shift (Image: Suzanne Ireland)
A spokesman for Havering Council said: “We understand that receiving a parking ticket can be frustrating, but our enforcement officers can only work with the information they have.
“In two of these cases, the resident paid for their parking at two to three hour intervals using the parking app and unfortunately the payment record was not updated in time on our enforcement officers’ devices, resulting in PCNs being issued by mistake. They have now been appealed and overturned.
“The car park in question has a 12 hour limit which we understand can be difficult for some hospital staff.
“We are currently talking to the hospital to see what options we can implement to avoid this problem in the future.”
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