DORSET'S hospital workers have paid an eye-watering £1 million in charges to park at their own workplace, new figures have revealed.

The Royal Bournemouth And Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust raked in £648,350 in the year to March, from charges and penalty fines incurred by NHS workers parking across all its sites.

Figures released by the NHS show that Poole Hospital NHS Trust coined £472,090 in the same time period.

Meanwhile, the Dorset health area made £291,060 in the year to March.

In total, hospital workers in Dorset collectively paid £1,235,240 for the privilege of parking at their workplaces in 2017.

However, when the staff payments are added to the amounts made by charging patients and visitors, the figures show that the hospitals in Bournemouth and Poole made more than £1 million EACH from parking last year.

RBCH made £1.2 million from parking fees paid by patients and visitors, bringing its total parking income take to £1.8 million.

Poole raised a further £661,930 from parking charges paid by patients and visitors, meaning they saw parking fees raise £1.1 million.

And visitors to Dorset's hospitals and facilities paid £422,670, meaning the trust's total income from car parking was £713,740.

Unite, a union which represents around 100,000 health workers, has slammed the "scandalous" figures, which it said amounted to a "tax on hard-pressed" employees.

National officer for health at Unite, Sarah Carpenter, said: "It is a scandal that NHS trusts in England have pocketed nearly £70m from staff car parking charges.

"Such a large figure will take a large chunk out of the gains in the current NHS pay package which saw most staff get a pay rise of 6.5 per cent over the next three years.

"This pernicious trend is replicated by financially squeezed trusts across England - our members are being used as an extra income stream for these trusts. We would like a situation where dedicated NHS staff, who don't earn a fortune, don't have to pay to park their cars to go to work to look after the sick, the vulnerable and the injured 365 days a year."

The Patients Association has criticised the existence of parking charges for patients, describing them as "a charge on people who are unwell, levied on them because they are unwell."

However, chief executive Rachel Power said they were a way for hospitals to generate revenue at a time when they are under "immense" financial pressure.