The London Parking Review – Are they mad !!

A single parking space near Hyde Park in Central London went on the market for a record-breaking £300,000. The openair spot measures 3.3m by 6.4m and is located in Hyde Park Gardens.

And it was only being offered on a 91-year lease, so the lucky buyer won’t even own it. This makes it nearly twice as much as the average house sold in the UK last month. Estate agent Kay & Co, sold two parking spaces nearby last year for £250,000 each. They said: “The fact that people will pay more than the price of a small flat for the privilege of their own parking space is indicative of the desirability of parking in Westminster.”

With over 3 million cars resident in Central London and over another 1 million entering the city every day, parking is at a premium. Especially when you consider that those 5 million cars are all contained in an area the equivalent of 40 km by 40 km, and that most of that space is already taken up by buildings and roads. And paying for parking is not cheap either. Charges for parking in Central London range between £6.33 (9.24 CHF) and £4.07 (5.94 CHF) per hour for a secure off the road parking space.

And the prices are rising at an average rate of over 10% per annum. The main price drivers are the volume of cars looking for parking each day, the lack of parking capacity and the high land values. For example, premium riverside development land in Central London with planning permission for residential usage is selling for up to £5,165 (7,534 CHF) per square metre and is selling at up to £15,640 (22,815 CHF) per sq metre once developed. And prices for development land for commercial usage are also rising fast, at nearly £3,000 per square metre (4,376 CHF).

What are the implications of all these factors for Skyline Parking ? In a word, exciting.

Because our automated parking systems reduce land take by up to 45% compared to a conventional multi storey car park solution (above or below ground), the overall savings can be dramatic.

For example, if you consider a 200 space car park in a prime development area of Central London, the total build costs savings can be in excess of £2.9m (4.2m CHF) - £11.9m compared to £14.8m for a conventional car park – all enabled by the reduced land take.

Alternatively, if the client chooses to still purchase the same area of land, but converts the spare space to additional residential use, the potential for comparable cost savings increases up to £5.7m (8.3m CHF) for the same facility, excluding any financing costs.

In essence, a car park size of greater than 80 places in a prime residential setting will always result in lower full building costs using an automated parking system as opposed to a conventional one.

So the message is simple – Skyline Parking can save you money on your development and provide you with a superior parking solution. And the same is true in any capital city in the world, where there is high parking demand, limited supply and premium land prices.

David Calthorpe,
Director UK

About Skyline Parking AG

Skyline Parking AG designs and supplies the most space-efficient and fastest fully automated parking systems. Skyline’s systems provide high returns while being an environmentally and user-friendly answer to the growing scarcity and cost of urban space, worldwide. The broad range of products, means that Skyline Parking has a solution for virtually any location, problem and requirement.