The Campaigns Award: The NHS Free Parking Platform for Critical Workers

British Parking Awards 2021

Chris Newman of category sponsor Conduent Transportation with the BPA’s Julian O’Kelly and Andrew Pester, JustPark’s Anthony Eskinazi, Parkopedia’s Eugene Tsyrklevich and Marcus Brigstocke

Chris Newman of category sponsor Conduent Transportation with the BPA’s Julian O’Kelly and Andrew Pester, JustPark’s Anthony Eskinazi, Parkopedia’s Eugene Tsyrklevich and Marcus Brigstocke

During the first period of lockdown, the British Parking Association (BPA) and its members focussed their attention on doing the right thing to help the national emergency, using the sector’s expertise and resources in the most effective manner. There was an urgent requirement for a coherent, user-friendly service that enabled NHS staff, health and social care workers and NHS volunteers to identify free parking places – both public and private.

The BPA decided to establish a nationwide platform to enable critical care workers to find free parking locations quickly and easily, showing them what they needed to do to confirm and display their eligibility. The BPA developed the NHS Free Parking Platform for Critical Workers in partnership with parking technology firms YourParkingSpace, Parkopedia and JustPark.

To ensure the platform was comprehensive and operational as soon as possible, the BPA formed a partnership with its partner operators who provided expertise and reach required to achieve such a feat. To succeed, the platform required skilled project management, web design, data analytics and communications expertise, which all partners devoted for free, working tirelessly together to deliver on this challenge in a matter of days. Support and guidance was also sought from the government, NHS England, the Royal Voluntary Service and the wider parking community to ensure the platform was fit for purpose.

The result was a fully functional website (www.nhs-freeparking.co.uk ) containing over one million free parking locations. The BPA hosted and publicised an information portal which directed critical care workers to a filtered view of Parkopedia’s search facility, which aggregated all JustPark and Yourparkingspace free parking offers, so privately owned spaces and driveways could be located alongside other offers provided by councils and non-council car parks across the UK.
Between March and July 2020, some 50,000 critical care workers used Parkopedia’s search facility to find free parking locations close to where they needed to be. The website’s popularity is illustrated by over 40% of users finding the site from 116 referral sites such as NHS England’s website.

To spread awareness of the platform the BPA featured interviews with partners in the launch episode of the Beyond Parking’podcast, while Parkopedia’s chief executive Eugene Tsyrklevich spoke about the initiative on The Parking Podcast with Isaiah Mouw.

Julian O’Kelly, the BPA’s head of technology, innovation and research, says: “The platform gave our amazing healthcare workers one less thing to worry about by saving them valuable time when they have been focussed on saving lives. It enabled community workers to park on-street and in public car parks during the lockdown as they supported people who were self-isolating or staying at home. As society restarted in the summer, many local schemes were being withdrawn, and so we, in turn, withdrew the service in July. However, the government is currently considering the future of the national ID Parking Pass.

“Our web platform has illustrated what our sector can achieve in a time of national need, and the leadership provided the project partners highlights how we can work together to deliver on any future national system supporting our critical care workers. Should government policy on NHS and social care mandate permanent support for free parking, we can now build on this innovation to develop a register of accredited service users for all locations where such users can park for free.”

Conor Greely, chief executive officer of Carflow, pays tribute to the service: “The NHS parking platform was put together at breakneck speed with superb collaboration of parking industry companies led by the BPA. This provided easy to access information about free parking for key workers all across the UK enabling them to find free parking during the critical first wave.”