The simple motoring trick that could save £223 on parking each month
UK COMMUTERS could make huge saving every month by choosing different places to park than they usually do.
UK drivers could be saving hundreds a month by using alternative parking spots
It has been revealed the British motorists could save up to £223 by choosing to park just 0.6 miles outside the city centre.
Parking in a city centre can be extortionate, but drivers can combat this by parking slightly outside the city centre.
Unsurprisingly, London took the top spot as the priciest place to park by a significant margin with average monthly costs of £694.80.
Outside of London, Leeds and Cardiff are the expensive places to park per month at £355.40 and £327.40 respectively.
The research, by vehicle inspection specialists, HPI Check, analysed the price of over 200 car parks across the UK, concentrating on the costs of parking for one hour, a full working day (9am-5pm) and a calendar month (based on Mon-Fri), before analysing the differences when a person parks a little further outside.
Top five most expensive parking cities (ranked highest to lowest):
• London - £694.80
• Leeds - £355.40
• Cardiff - £327.40
• Manchester - £302.20
• Glasgow - £286.60
At the other end of the scale, Birmingham emerged as the cheapest major city to park in with average monthly costs of just £148.20.
According to HPI’s research, drivers can save hundreds a month and thousands a year by choosing parking spots that are slightly outside the city centre.
Top five highest saving cities when parking 0.6 miles outside a centre:
• Manchester - £223.30
• Cardiff - £221
• Leeds - £192.02
• Liverpool - £133.60
• Sunderland - £133.20
Average hourly rates in city centres
The findings also revealed that the North East is home to some of the least expensive car parks for one-hour stays in the UK.
We also wanted to analyse how much people could be saving
Sunderland emerged as the cheapest with an average hourly rate of just £0.79, Birmingham came in second as £1.50 per hour, and Newcastle took third place with prices averaging £1.72.
London is the biggest pocket bumper for one hour stays with averages costing an eye-watering £9.10, followed by Manchester (£3.18) and Cardiff (£3.14).
Drivers can make the biggest savings in Manchester where it is 74 per cent cheaper to park outside the city centre.
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Finding a spot between 0.6-0.9 miles outside the city centre would cost just £3.95 a day compared to the £15.11 inside the city.
This means that a driver could save £2,678 over a 12-month period.
Fernando Garcia, Consumer Marketing Director at HPI Check said: “Parking in the UK’s major cities can be very expensive, the cost for one hour can be high, but staying for longer than a few hours can mean that prices quickly jump into the double figures.
Parking inside the city vs parking outside the city
Percentage saved per month by parking outside city centre
“Not only did we want to look at where some of the priciest locations in the UK were, but we also wanted to analyse how much people could be saving if they were to locate just a small distance away from the city centre.
“The capital came out the highest, but, what’s interesting to see is the costs of some of the northern cities, with Leeds the second highest for the whole country and workers in the city expecting to pay over £300 during a calendar month.
“However, when we look at the savings that could be made when moving just slightly outside the city centre, Leeds again is the perfect example of this with costs going from £355.40 per month to £163.20 a month by simply moving just a mere 0.6 miles outside.”
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