The Most Expensive Parking Spaces in the UK
Parking costs have skyrocketed. In some areas, they have more than doubled in just a couple of years. We’re doing our bit to combat these price rises by helping you find cheaper parking spaces at airports, but in some councils, simply parking outside the shops for a few hours could set you back over £20.
To highlight just how rapid car parking costs have risen, we thought it would be a good time to look at some of the priciest car parking spots in the United Kingdom.
The Most Expensive Areas to Park
A couple of years ago, an insurance company conducted a survey on parking costs in the United Kingdom and highlighted areas such as Kensington and Chelsea as being the most expensive. These regions charged drivers around £5 per hour to park. Worryingly, the same researchers checked prices again this year and found that many of those charges had increased significantly.
Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council charges drivers just 98p per hour on average, but this is a sizeable jump from the 40p they charged last year. Renfrewshire Council also doubled its fees, while the London Borough of Hillingdon, Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council, and Uttlesford District Council have all increased their costs by more than 70% since 2022.
Overall, Bracknell Forest Council in Berkshire is the most expensive on average, charging £6.65 per hour.
Most of the highest-priced areas were in London and across the South East, but Wyre Forest District Council in the West Midlands (£4.05), Glasgow in Scotland (£3.38), and Lancaster City Council (£3.30) also made the hall of shame.
The Most Expensive Private Car Parking Spaces
In late 2023, The Sun reported on a private parking space that it dubbed “the most expensive in the UK”. It charged £36.20 for just 4 hours. If you booked by the hour, you’d be charged £13.90, and this jumped to £83.40 for the day. But there were plenty of takers, even though it would have been cheaper to park across the street and accept a fine of £65. This Knightsbridge space, equipped with CCTV and electronic charging ports, is just a stone’s throw from Hyde Park in an area where parking always comes at a premium and is never easy to find.
It’s a huge price, but it’s far from the most expensive in 2024. We researched similar parking spaces around Hyde Park and found one a 25-minute walk away that charges £139 for a 4-hour stay. Again, it’s a private driveway, but this time the only benefit is that it’s large enough for mini buses and vans.
If you’d prefer your car to be covered, you can book a private garage 20 minutes from Hyde Park for an eye-watering £417 for a 4-hour stay. At the time of writing, this entry is brand new and doesn’t seem to have any bookings, so it could just be a homeowner trying their luck, but there are many others available for over £70 an hour.
As always, there is a clear north-south divide here. The most expensive private car parking spaces near Durham Cathedral are listed for an average of £10 for 4 hours, and no one is charging more than £30. You can also book scores of private car parking spaces in Newcastle for less than £10.
The Cheapest Areas to Park in the UK
We have looked at the most expensive places to park in the UK, but what about the cheapest?
St. Davids in Wales takes the crown here. Parking in authority-charging car parks is free from November to February every year, and there is Pay and Display parking for just £6 per day from March to October. Parking is also free in many car parks if you stay for just 30 minutes (60 minutes if you have a Blue Badge).
There are many cheap places to park across Northern Ireland, with Armagh, Bangor, Newry, and Lisburn all giving you change back on £1 for 2-hour parking. In England, Ripon, Ely, and Sunderland are the cheapest places to park.
Where are the Most Expensive Hospital Car Parks in the United Kingdom?
Hospital car parking is a massive bone of contention for many drivers. It’s often the subject of conversation in hospital waiting rooms as guests mentally calculate how much they are spending to visit their loved ones.
It was estimated that patients and visitors spent nearly £146 million on NHS parking in 2023, and as with the local authority and private car parking spaces outlined above, this number has been rising. A year earlier, it was just £96.7 million.
At £5.2 million, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust took the biggest share of this money, around £1.6 million more than the second-placed University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust. Other big earners included NHS trusts in Leicester, Essex, Sussex, Oxford, Gloucestershire, and Southampton.
These are not necessarily the most expensive hospitals, as those figures could also represent high patient and visitor numbers. Other surveys highlight Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge as one of the costliest, charging visitors over £13 for a stay of 6 hours and more than £22 for those spending the full day there.
How to Save Money on Parking
The easiest way to save money on car parking in the UK is to check comparison search engines to see what options are available before you book. You can use our platform to find cheap airport parking, but there are other options if you need to spend a prolonged period of time at a railway station or even in a hospital.
You can also look at alternative options. For instance, taking the bus to your destination will be notably cheaper than paying for parking, and you don’t have to worry about fuel costs or parking fines, either. If that’s out of the question, ask a friend if they can drop you off or take a taxi. It may seem like the more expensive option at first, but without those fuel and parking costs, it could be a cheaper solution.