National Car Parks entered administration this week, and the coverage has followed a predictable script: jobs at risk, iconic brand in trouble, another casualty of post-pandemic Britain. All true. But the real story isn’t about what’s being lost. It’s about what could be gained.
NCP operates 340 car parks across the UK – at airports, hospitals, railway stations, and city centres. That’s 200,000 parking spaces sitting on some of the most strategically located urban land in the country. Land with road access, public transport links, and existing planning permissions for intensive use. And right now, it’s available at a fraction of its market value.
The government should be picking up the phone.
What killed NCP – and why it matters
The company’s debts exceeded its assets by £305 million. Demand for city-centre parking never recovered to pre-pandemic levels, and NCP was locked into long-term, inflexible leases on sites it couldn’t afford to operate. The business model broke because people’s behaviour changed: more remote working, fewer commuter journeys, a gradual shift away from the car-dependent patterns that made NCP profitable for nine decades.
This isn’t a temporary blip. It’s a structural correction. And structural corrections create structural opportunities – if someone is willing to act.
The opportunity: triage, don’t rescue
The case isn’t for bailing out a failed business. It’s for acquiring a portfolio of strategically important land and infrastructure out of administration at distressed prices, then putting it to work for the public good.
A sensible approach would triage the sites into three categories. First, the essential infrastructure: car parks at hospitals, airports, and major transport hubs where parking isn’t a convenience but a necessity. These should be acquired and leased to local authorities or NHS trusts to operate, generating revenue while protecting access to critical public services.
Second, and this is where it gets exciting, the city-centre sites where parking demand has permanently declined. These are large, flat plots or multi-storey structures on generous footprints, sitting in exactly the locations where Britain most desperately needs social housing. The land is already serviced, already accessible, and already zoned for intensive use. Mixed-use development with retained ground-floor parking could serve both needs simultaneously.
Third, sites that are neither strategically important nor suitable for housing get sold back into the private market, with the proceeds helping fund the first two categories.
The numbers work
This is fiscally defensible in a way that most housing interventions aren’t. Buying distressed assets out of administration means the acquisition cost is a fraction of equivalent land purchased on the open market. The sites retained as car parks generate ongoing revenue through local authority operation. The housing sites address one of the country’s most acute policy failures. And the sales from surplus sites offset the upfront cost. It’s not a subsidy. It’s an investment in public assets at fire-sale prices.
Compare that to the alternative: PwC, as administrators, will seek to maximise returns for creditors. In practice, that means selling prime urban sites to property developers who will build whatever generates the highest return – which, in most city centres, means luxury flats or commercial space, not the social housing that communities actually need. The market, left to its own logic, will convert this public infrastructure failure into a private profit opportunity. It doesn’t have to.
From bombsite to building site
There’s a historical echo here that’s hard to ignore. NCP was literally founded on a bombsite, Sir Ronald Hobson and his partner invested £200 in a patch of war-damaged land in Holborn in 1948, recognising that post-war Britain needed car parks more than it needed rubble. They saw an opportunity in destruction and built something useful.
Eighty years later, the land is available again. Not because of bombs, but because of a market correction that has left prime urban sites stranded between a failed business model and an uncertain future. The question is whether we have the same pragmatic instinct: to look at what the country actually needs now and repurpose the land accordingly.
In 1948, the answer was parking spaces. In 2026, it’s front doors.
* Tanya Park is a Lib Dem County, Borough & Town councillor in Eastleigh, Hampshire and writes at A Just Society, a liberal policy project making the case for radical progressive policies grounded in liberal principles.
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11 Comments
I’m hoping the need for parking spaces will greatly reduce over the next few years as autonomous vehicles arrive. That should greatly reduce the need for people to own cars and even those that do can be dropped off so they don’t need parking close to their destination. When they do park, they do so accurately so the space required is significantly less.
Tanya, I totally agree that this is a fantastic opportunity.
When it comes to the crunch, who is going to do what? Can we zoom in and pinpoint the individuals who need to make this happen? Does it in any way require legislation?
And is the parliamentary party going to grasp this opportunity?
In an ideal world at least some of these properties could be developed for social housing. In an ideal world. And we don’t live in an ideal world. Unfortuately, as the article itself points out, the administrators have a legal duty to try to recover as much money as possible to pay the creditors what they are owed. In effect, these assets are owned by the creditors. What exactly is being proposed here ? Purloining the creditors assets because the state has a better use for them ? Seriously ?
I am also confused by the authors cotradictory assumptions. Are these distressed assets which can be bought for a song, or highly disirable sites which are extremely valuable to property developers ?
Most, though not all, of this article seems to ignore the legal facts.
It is correct when it writes “PwC, as administrators, will seek to maximise returns for creditors.” That is their legal duty.
There is no reason to believe that “Buying distressed assets out of administration means the acquisition cost is a fraction of equivalent land purchased on the open market. The price is likely to be lower than a seller could obtain by waiting for a long time, since PwC will want to sell. However I think the author greatly exaggerates the price reduction likely to be available.
The car parks should be sold by PwC to whichever purchaser will pay the highest price. That is all there is to say.
Thanks Graham, no legislation needed, local authorities can already bid in administration sales. What’s required is speed and political will before PwC parcels everything up. And Chris, nobody’s suggesting purloining anything, the government would be a buyer like anyone else. Valuable sites trapped inside a distressed business is precisely how pricing windows get created.
Mohammed Amin 19th Mar ’26 – 6:06pm:
The price is likely to be lower than a seller could obtain by waiting for a long time, since PwC will want to sell.
First, they will look to renegotiate leases and put them on a sustainable basis so marginal sites can be made viable, thus increasing their value.
However I think the author greatly exaggerates the price reduction likely to be available.
Indeed; city centre sites which aren’t viable as car parks due to resolutely high lease costs are also likely to be too expensive for social housing. Student accommodation may be a possibility in some cases, otherwise they will most likely be bought by developers for premium priced high-rise flats.
NCP appears to be another company which has failed to follow its customers. For decades, retail has been moving away from city centres to out-of-town retail parks with free car parking. Leisure, such as cinemas, has followed. Offices too have relocated to business parks with car parking on site. NCP might have done better to have observed this trend and transitioned the company accordingly.
I think you will find hospitals airports railways sits inside their managed services division where revenue is sent to NHS trusts railways or airport. A few may be near to these facilities and leased but majority will pass back to owners.
Seems like another wish list scribbled on the back of an Nus card. It’s not going to happen as Chris has outlined correctly.
Great thinking.
Housing is what is needed now but…
Hospitals, for example, are often in need of expansion and whilst buy it now is the first step what follows needs a careful site by site review to determine what is going to be the best use of the land .
Yet another example of an end to an era which was as commonplace as the Routemaster Bus or the infamous red Telephone Box..incredibly poignant and sad..we shouldn’t forget that too many driving remains one of lifes’ pleasures, particularly those of us who choose to make a living from it.
Much of the car parks of course were created in an era beneath Metropolitan Open Land which would prohibit building of the nature described..
“Operate” and “lease” don’t mean “own”.
Interestingly, NCP’s website claims: ”We currently have over 200,000 parking spaces in over 800 sites”
Given its owner – Park24- is still in operation, I suggest the 340 “operated” car parks represent those, and only those with the “onerous” leases. The other 460 sites have been transferred to another entity. Ie. Classic asset strippping and disposal of the carcass…