Car Parks: Who's Making Money From Your Ticket?

The Bottom Line

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Business

4.6 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's an industry that has few fans, but how does it really work, and will there be enough spaces in future for the UK's growing fleet of cars?

Evan Davis looks under the bonnet of a much-maligned industry to find out where the money goes and why motorists have to pay in the first place. The government has been clamping down on 'cowboy' operators - can this, along with technology like Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras, make car parks fairer?

With changing travel patterns post-pandemic, and growing restrictions on cars in towns and cities, we ask whether car parks can stay profitable. And, if more of them are repurposed into flats or other uses, will motorists face even more competition for spaces, and higher prices, in future?

Evan is joined by:

Adam Bidder, managing director, Q-Park UK and Ireland; Ashley Bijster, managing Director, Modaxo; Anthony Eskinazi, founder and president, JustPark.

Production team:

Producer: Simon Tulett Editor: Matt Willis Sound: James Beard Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:05.3	Thanks for downloading this episode of the Bottom Line podcast. I hope you enjoy it.
0:09.6	If you do, then once you've finished, you might want to try another one about an industry that generates strong feelings, debt collectors, and whether they deserve their reputation.
0:19.3	That episode is from October last year.
0:22.9	Now, it is fascinating to go behind the scenes and see how various industries work, where they
0:27.9	make their money, where they spend their money, what goes well for them, what goes wrong for them.
0:33.2	And it's even more fascinating when it's an industry of which most of us are customers.
0:43.3	And the industry we want to examine today is particularly interesting as it arouses strong feelings sometimes. Feelings of annoyance and frustration.
0:46.3	Car parking.
0:48.3	Now, I think some would say it's not a business.
0:50.3	It's a scandal how much you pay in fees and in fines.
0:53.3	But it has been changing pretty fast as an industry.
0:57.0	You might think it's just about painting lines on the ground between which cars can sit,
1:01.5	but it's actually getting to be high tech.
1:04.2	There are record numbers of cars on the road, 42 million in the UK,
1:08.8	and there are worries that our parking infrastructure is stagnating the
1:13.1	number of spaces could be falling. So, let us look at the provision of off-street commercial
1:19.5	parking, and we have three expert guests to help us, and let us meet them. And first up,
1:24.9	Adam Bidder, managing direct for the UK and Ireland at Kewpark.
1:29.5	So tell us about the company first, because it's international, Adam.
1:33.2	Yeah, Kew Park was formed 26 years ago in Maastricht in the Netherlands from, where our original founder
1:39.6	has 17 car parks from his father-in-law and wasn't quite sure what to do with them.
	...

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