New figures have revealed how much Bolton NHS Foundation Trust makes from parking.

The figures, published on October 17, showed a whopping £993,413 income from patient and visitor parking, and an eye-watering £508,587 made from staff parking charges.

When asked about the high income, Andy Ennis, Chief Operating Officer at the Trust said: "In common with other NHS hospitals, the Royal Bolton Hospital provides car parks for patients, visitors and staff and makes a charge for this.

"Income is used to maintain and supervise the car parks and is reinvested in patient care."

Royal Bolton Hospital has 2,433 spaces which cost £161,681 to provide.

Of these, 113 are exclusively for disabled parking.

Customers pay an average of £1 per hour, with staff paying an average of 6p per hour.

That low price means that staff parked for almost 8.5 million hours last year.

The data has come from the 2018/19 Estates Return Information Collection.

It shows the costs of providing and maintaining the NHS Estate including buildings, maintaining and equipping hospitals, and the provision of services like laundry and food.

Bolton Foundation Trust were asked to confirm how much it costs to provide parking, as spaces have a cost 1.5 times lower than those at similar sites.

The Trust cited their surface car parks and very few barriers to maintain as the reason behind their low operating costs.

In the 2018/19 period, the NHS reported their total running costs of the estate to be £9.5 billion, with the cost to perform all maintenance that should have already taken place hitting £6.5 billion.

Bolton invested over £1 million to fix the maintenance backlog last year.

The Trust collected almost £3.2 million last financial year from various services such as areas leased out for retail, waste, cleaning services, and laundry.

Figures also show that the Trust received over £11 million of public sector investment via loans from the Department of Health and Social Care or internal funding.

There was also £120,000 invested in equipment for estates and facilities, which includes land purchases, External Financial Limit allocations and donations.

A further £6.4 million was invested in improving existing buildings, and £6.1 million was put aside for new buildings.