The hardest places in the UK to find a parking space have been revealed – and here’s the most expensive

THE hardest places to find a parking space in the UK have been revealed – as well as the most expensive spots.

There are some cities that don’t have anywhere near enough car parks for the number of registered vehicles, and others where an hour’s parking costs more than an eye-watering £7.

And the top 10 worst spots in both categories have been named.

One of the worst places to find a park is in the Northwest city of Chester, where there’s not even a full space per 1000 of the registered cars in the city.

And, the most expensive place to park up is Edinburgh, where you’ll pay a whopping average of £7.78 an hour.

London features on both lists – it’s number five on the hardest places to find a parking space, and number four on the most expensive list.

There are just 1.47 spaces per 1000 cars in England capital, and the average cost for an hour’s parking is £6.56.

The research was conducted by car finance company Moneybarn.

It revealed the worst places to find a car park, after Chester and apart from London, are: Exeter, Bournemouth, Chelmsford, Gloucester, Preston, Bradford, Stoke-on-Trent and Stratford-upon-Avon.

It also exposed the most costly areas, apart from Edinburgh and London, and they are: Cambridge, Norwich, Brighton, Nottingham, Glasgow, Bristol, Liverpool and Newark-on-Trent.

Moneybarn created the lists using data from National Car Parks, the UK’s biggest car parking provider, as well as Department for Transport and DVLA information, too.

It said: “In the UK, huge numbers of people use their cars daily, whether commuting to work, doing the weekly shopping, taking gran to her appointments, or picking the kids up from school.

“As public transport has been gradually scaled back over the years, with fewer bus routes and frequent disruption to rail services, the cost of public transport has continued to rise, making vehicle ownership a much more attractive option for many people.

“With more and more people choosing to drive themselves from A to B, finding a parking space can be easier said than done.

“This made us wonder which UK cities have the best parking provision, and which have the worst.

“To get to the bottom of this, we’ve conducted a study to find out which cities have the most available parking, taking one national car park company as an example, as well as seeing where it is most expensive to park your car.

“Other car parks are, of course, available in each city, however we wanted our study to reflect parking accessibility, too.”

The revelation comes after a council exposed some of the worst car parking attempts in the past year.