Edinburgh parking: New permits for carers to be introduced in Capital

Two new types of parking permit are set to be introduced for carers in Edinburgh.

The council plans to make them available to both paid and unpaid carers, who are not currently eligible for a healthcare workers permit. It comes as the council continues to expand controlled parking zones (CPZs) across the capital.

Transport convener Scott Arthur said passes for carers were “much awaited”. Consultation results showed over 90 per cent surveyed were in favour of the scheme, which it is expected to take up to a year to roll out.

A ‘professional carers’ permit’ will be available to self-employed carers or organisations to purchase for staff for £700 a year. These will be valid in pay and display and shared-use parking spaces in all zones for two hours at a time.

Several vehicles will be able to be registered with the same pass so that “permits can be purchased by organisations and passed out to the staff member who needs it each day,” a council report said.

A permit for ‘personal carers’ who are volunteers or unpaid – including those looking after family members full or part time – will be valid only within the zone where the cared-for person lives, but with no maximum stay imposed. Only one can be issued for an address, but two vehicles are allowed to register to use it. The cost will be set at a “comparable level” to standard residential parking permits as they “will essentially offer similar concessions,” the council said.

Meanwhile the cost of a healthcare workers’ permit (HWP), available to qualified doctors, nurses, health professionals and social care workers, will rise from £10 to £25 as the council said it “has not changed since 2008”.

Further changes to HWPs will allow passes to be used in the city centre – not just in parking zones one to four as current rules stipulate – and the maximum stay will increase from two hours to four.

In addition healthcare workers will be allowed to park in permit holder spaces within priority parking areas “due to the scarcity of yellow lines and public parking places in these areas”.

If approved at the transport and environment committee on Thursday, March 7, traffic regulation orders would be progressed to take forward the scheme. Officials said this process would take up to a year to complete.