Patients and their families will pay up to three times more to park at hospitals in East Sussex.

Health trust bosses yesterday agreed to raise charges at the Eastbourne District General Hospital (DGH) and Conquest Hospital in Hastings.

From next month, visitors will be charged £1.50 for up to three hours' stay and £3 for a full day at both sites.

At the moment, people pay £1.20 a day at the DGH and £1 a day at the Conquest, both hospitals run by East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust.

Patient groups condemned the increase, saying low income families will be particularly hard hit.

Trust bosses, however, told a board meeting at the DGH that charges had remained stagnant since 2000.

They pledged to plough the estimated £180,000-a-year income the rises will generate into improving parking facilities.

Car park assistants will be hired at the Conquest, security at both sites will be beefed up and more short-stay spaces created.

The rises come as car parking space dwindles - both sites are often used by people to park-and-ride and lack of spaces is high on the trust's complaints list.

Trust chief executive Annette Sergeant said: "This is an issue which clearly evokes strong feelings. It's currently in the top three or four issues of formal or informal complaints that we receive.

"Given the type of population that we serve - a mix of urban and rural areas - and with public transport not being as we would like, most people travel in by car.

"It has been mentioned that if we're going to avoid people being stressed then this is something we need to pay attention to.

"The current arrangements are not meeting the needs of people, particularly from our staff's perspective who get abused.

"Also, patients are arriving up to two hours before appointments therefore the traffic flow isn't being helped."

Staff are exempt from parking charges which will be limited to 6am and 10pm.

Tony Hollands, of the Hastings and Rother Community Health Council, feared patients receiving treatment would feel anxious about how long they stay in hospital.

He said: "If a patient is in the middle of treatment are you expecting that person to come out to put another £2 in the slot machine? It's things like this that are worrying the CHC."

The rises still make the trust's car parks comparatively cheap.

It will still be more expensive to park at Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals and Worthing and Southlands Hospitals.

The only neighbouring hospital that is cheaper is in Pembury, Kent, where it costs £1 for three hours.

Trust bosses pledged to highlight more vigorously that patients on income support can reclaim their travel expenses and the board unanimously agreed to raise the charges and vowed to carry out a review in a year's time.

The charges come as the trust faces an acute financial crisis, with a predicted overspend of £5.2 million.