Swansea named one of the cheapest places to park your car in the UK

New research has found the UK’s cheapest and most expensive places to park.   

Looking at the thirty busiest cities for traffic across the UK, including each London borough, researchers at Your Red Car crunched the numbers and created a weighted ranking to score each area, revealing the cheapest and most expensive cities to park in.  

Each city has been scored on the cost of parking for 2 and 4 hour durations, the price of parking on a driveway or parking spot, the number of car park spaces available, minutes to destination and the number electric charging points available at the car parks.  

Middlesbrough, Hull and Swansea are the cheapest cities to park your car in the UK  Middlesborough takes the top spot on the list with an average cost of £2.01 to park in a car park for two hours and £3.55 for four hours. The city also has the lowest prices when parking on someone else’s drive, at an average of £55.00 per month. Middlesbrough has an overall score of 81.24 out of 100. 

Hull is the second cheapest cost for using someone’s designated parking space or driveway, at an average of £74.25 per month. Often used by regular commuters or on local event days, this highlights how affordable this option is for those in Middlesborough, 68 miles away. 

Swansea sits in third place with a slightly higher cost to park for four hours at £4.84. However, with a low average cost of £2.09 to park for two hours and over 11,000 spaces in the city, there are plenty of options for visitors and residents to park their motors. 

Swansea Council recently launched new cheaper parking rates in the city centre, with most car parks now costing £1 an hour up to a maximum charge of £5 for all-day parking.

Belfast is the most expensive city for parking, whereas Portsmouth is the most expensive for parking on a driveway or a parking spot. 

According to the data, Belfast is the most expensive city to park in for two hours at £3.01, and still the most costly at a four-hour parking spot at £5.81, a 93% increase.

It was also found that Portsmouth is the most expensive city to park your car on a driveway or a parking spot, despite Belfast having the most parking spaces at 17,819.

Outside of the top 10, Glasgow takes the top place when offering car parking spaces, which comes in at 24,108.

Both Belfast and Southampton both offer 11 charging points across the city. The rest of the research also explores the cheapest and most expensive car parks to park in within a city or London Borough, as well as comparing the cheapest vs the most costly short and long-stay car parks.

Denton Brock, head of Your Red Car says, “In the current cost of living crisis, everyone is feeling the pinch and so we hope our research helps those that are looking to visit their local city and park cheaper. Not only have we highlighted the cheapest and most expensive cities to park in, but we have also listed five of the cheapest and most expensive car parks for each area.”