Free parking for community nurses among plans to celebrate NHS's 75th birthday in Sunderland

The council has made a commitment to work with health colleagues, schools and voluntary groups to develop a range of initiatives to mark the occasion.

The pledge was made at a meeting of full council at City Hall on June 14, 2023, following a motion from the city council’s ruling Labour Group.

The original motion from Labour councillors agreed steps to be put in place for as many buildings, historic monuments and high-profile city sites to be ‘lit up blue” on July 5, 2023.

Following an amendment from the council’s opposition Conservative Group, councillors agreed for the council to arrange for free parking for community nurses at council-owned car parks.

While Labour bosses said that parking arrangements for community nurses were already under way, they welcomed the “positive amendment”.

Councillor Kelly Chequer, cabinet member for Healthy City, launched the debate and invited councillors to reflect on the history of the NHS and its future.

In light of Central Government policies, staffing issues, long waiting lists and recent NHS pay disputes the councillor, who is an NHS nurse, said it was important to safeguard the health service for future generations.

Cllr Chequer said: “While we celebrate and thank the NHS for its 75-year service to us let’s not lose sight of the need to be vigilant and be prepared to take action to protect it for future generations.

“Today I stand in solidarity with the junior doctors taking industrial action to stand up for their profession and fight back against 15 years of below inflation pay rises.

“From the midwives who help bring us into the world, the GPs and the pharmacists who are our first point of call when we are sick, the nurses,doctors and clinicians who care for us in our time of need, the porters and cleaners who keep our hospitals running and the hundreds and thousands of dedicated staff and volunteers in between.

“People are the driving force in delivering this and I would like them to be acknowledged and of course paid a wage worth their value”.

Several city councillors, both current or former NHS employees, spoke out at the meeting in support of the motion.

Labour councillor Dianne Snowdon reflected on a long career as a nurse, and her return to frontline service in 2021 as a vaccinator during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Conservative councillor Simon Ayre, a retired nurse, and councillor Michael Butler, a Labour councillor and NHS employee, welcomed proposals for free parking for community nurses at council car parks.

Councillor Paul Donaghy, Reform UK member, credited his wife who works at Sunderland Royal Hospital and said the work of all NHS staff and their dedication to patients was “second to none”.

Cllr Donaghy said: “We must not be afraid to talk about the future of the NHS.

“Reform and restructuring are essential to ensure the best possible service for patients and to ensure a safe working environment for the amazing and dedicated staff to ensure we still have a free health service in 75 years time”.

Liberal Democrat councillor Paul Gibson also gave a perspective into life before the NHS, as someone who was born weeks before it was founded.

He said: “The NHS is far more than a national institution, it has transformed and saved millions of lives in the last 75 years.

“On a personal note, in my usual impeccably bad sense of timing, I was born 19 weeks before the NHS was founded and as a result, I cost my parents almost £250 in medical bills.

“That was for a home birth if it had been a hospital birth my father being a working man couldn’t have afforded it.

“I can also remember the rolling out of vaccination programmes in the 1950s for Polio and TB and I can remember a couple of my classmates having leg irons as they had been Polio victims.

“It’s something you just don’t see today”.

Councillor Antony Mullen, Conservative Group leader, proposed the amendment to the Labour motion to “provide free car parking in council-owned car parks to all community nurses working within the city”.

He said this aimed to tackle a situation where individual parking permits are “passed from nurse to nurse”.

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A second ask also included the council “exploring ways to fund free staff parking for Sunderland Royal Hospital staff at that site”.

Labour bosses said that arrangements at council car parks were already being explored by council officers and that the Sunderland Royal Hospital site was not in the council’s ownership, with parking mandated nationally.

Cllr Chequer said she would lobby a future Labour Government for hospital parking changes and encouraged members of the public to do their bit to celebrate the NHS.

This included volunteering, giving blood, joining the organ donor register, supporting NHS charities or joining the #NHS1000 miles challenge.

Councillor Graeme Miller, leader of Sunderland City Council, described the NHS as the “jewel in the crown” and said it was important to support it and all its staff.

Cllr Miller added: “Having the 75th birthday of the NHS, I don’t think people understand the gravitas of that and just how important it is that we have it.

“Because without it, the likelihood is that 20% of us wouldn’t be here because we would be dead, deaths in birth for mothers and children and then the illnesses that followed in the first five years.

“The NHS swept all of that away and yes of course we still have deaths in the system which are terrible for the people that are involved in that.

“But to have a population that all of a sudden had access to the care they needed when they needed it without them worrying about how they would pay for it.

“It was a transformative moment in the 20th Century for the people of the United Kingdom”.

More information about celebrations for the 75th birthday of the NHS are expected to be released by the council in due course.