Swansea Council has taken over the running of two city centre car parks abandoned by collapsed operator NCP, cutting all-day parking at both to £5.
NCP stopped operating the Kingsway and Orchard Street sites on Friday. The council’s red signs and £5-a-day tariff boards were going up at both this week, with the old NCP branding still in place above the entrances and its outline showing on the wall at Orchard Street where a sign had been stripped off.
Between them the two sites hold 840 spaces — 512 at Orchard Street and 328 at Kingsway — a significant slice of the city centre’s parking.
Parking at both now costs £1 an hour or £5 for the day, matching the council’s other city centre car parks, with Sundays £2 all day. Existing permit holders keep their spaces.
The company’s third Swansea site, City Gates on York Street, stays with NCP and is not part of the council’s plans. It has 251 spaces.
Cabinet member Andrew Stevens said the prospect of the car parks closing had been a concern when the council was given the news.
“Fortunately, the council own the freehold for both the Kingsway and Orchard Street sites,” he said. “This has given us the opportunity to take over the running of both sites and keep them both running without any disruption for car park users.”
He said the council would spend the next few months upgrading payment equipment and other features to bring the two sites up to the standard of its other car parks.
Cllr Stevens said Swansea now had “some of the cheapest parking fees anywhere in the country”.
The rescue ends four months of uncertainty for two of the city’s busiest car parks. NCP called in administrators from PwC in March after running out of cash, putting all its Swansea sites under review.
The company, which ran around 340 car parks and employed more than 680 people, never recovered from the collapse in commuting after the pandemic, while long leases kept its costs high.
PwC closed 29 car parks across England and Northern Ireland in the months that followed — none of them in Wales — while telling drivers the remaining sites were trading as normal.
The 840 spaces are a real addition to the council’s stock. When the 628-space Copr Bay North multi-storey opened this month, the 375-space St David’s car park shut the same day for demolition, leaving a net gain of just over 250 spaces.
Drivers with outstanding NCP fines should note that administration does not wipe them: the company still legally exists, and unpaid tickets can still be enforced.
Related stories from Swansea Bay News
NCP enters administration putting key Swansea car parks at risk
How the collapse put Kingsway, Orchard Street and City Gates under a cloud in March.
SWANSEA: Don’t ignore that NCP parking fine
Why administration doesn’t wipe out fines — and what the creditors’ meeting meant for Swansea.
COPR BAY: Opening day named for long-delayed car park
628 new spaces — and the 375-space car park that closed the same day.
