A PROPOSED 100 per cent hike in car park charges at a Bromsgrove hospital has been met by howls of protest from visitors and condemned as a "tax on the sick."

From Monday, January 27, drivers visiting the Princess of Wales Community Hospital off Stourbridge Road will have to fork out £1 instead of 50p to park, the Advertiser/Messenger can exclusively reveal.

In a letter to staff, the Redditch and Bromsgrove Primary Care Trust says charges have not been raised for two years, and despite struggling to maintain them at the present level the trust has regrettably been forced to act.

The letter states: "This action is something that has not been taken lightly and we assure you we will continue to strive to keep parking charges within the lowest bracket of charges within the Redditch and Bromsgrove locality."

Visitors and some staff the Advertiser/Messenger spoke to this week were highly critical of the proposed change.

Many said they failed to understand why a charge had to be made at all, others saw it as an indirect way of raising extra cash for the NHS.

Angry Kathleen Tedstone, vice chairman of the Bromsgrove and Redditch Community Health Council (CHC), said: "I personally am not happy about a 100 per cent increase. I consider it a tax on the sick.

"But the CHC has reluctantly accepted the changes in view of the trust's outstanding debts."

A trust spokeswoman said the charges are subject to a number of exclusions.

These include families of palliative patients and those on low incomes, regular users of mental health facilities on the site and frequent visitors to inpatient facilities.

Last month this newspaper reported that the trust had been told to find £2.4m during the coming financial year to pay off its debts.

In February 1999 the Advertiser/Messenger exclusively revealed that car parking fees were being introduced at the PoW to help pay off a £9m deficit.

Five years earlier parking charges had been introduced at the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch.