Car owners in Newport, Gwent are among the worst in Britain having difficulties obtaining parking permits.
The city is in the top five worst residential parking areas in Britain and drivers in Manchester, most of London and Scottish cities and towns are more successful parking outside their homes.
Chester and Cheshire are Britain’s worst councils giving out parking permits, followed by Birmingham and Wakefield before Newport (below) comes in fifth.
In fact, no other Welsh authority ranks inside the UK’s top 30 most difficult places to find a parking space.
Newport City Council allocated 1,647 permits to its 125,629 residents of driving age in the financial year 22/23, meaning just 1.31% of Newport adult residents have easy access to park their vehicles.
Swansea ranked 42nd with 11,164 permits among 194,665 driving age residents, some 5.73%, and generated just 11 complaints while Cardiff issued 30,712 permits among 289,627 residents, or 10.60% but saw 67 complaints.
The Freedom of Information requests made by Auto Trader also gave insights into the number of residential parking-related complaints each council has received.
Councils shared complaint data around issues such as permit availability, permit costs, the permit application process, and management of controlled parking areas over the last two years.
Of the 92 councils contacted, over 78% provided complaints data; however, the remaining councils said they were unable to provide the information requested.
This revealed Lambeth Borough Council to be the most complained about area in Britain regarding residential parking problems.
In both the financial years 2021/22 and 2022/23, the London borough received almost 700 complaints from residents who had concerns about the parking permits and their accessibility to parking spaces.
British Areas with the Most Limited Parking
Complaining about parking may be a very British thing, but it is a serious problem for many drivers, with motorists turning to social media to complain about how they may have to sell their cars due to a lack of residential parking. As such, researchers at Auto Trader have released information gleaned from new Freedom of Information requests to reveal where British residents have the most difficulty with parking.
By analysing the number of residential parking permits allocated by each council in the financial year 2022/23 and comparing it with the adult population figures of each region, researchers at Auto Trader discovered that Cheshire West and Chester Council is Britain’s most challenging place to park.
With 354 residential parking permits handed out to its driving-age population of 357,000 in 2022/23, only 0.12% of the people who live here have council-allocated parking.
Cheshire West and Chester covers approximately 350 square miles covering both the countryside and rural landscapes, as well as the historic City of Chester, where drivers may experience the greatest parking difficulty.
The problem continues in neighbouring council Cheshire East, which is the second-worst place for residential parking with just 0.17% of residents in this North-Western area receiving a parking permit.
Despite being home to a major train station like Crewe, and many other stations being run by Transport for Wales, Avanti West Coast and East Midlands Rail, there is still a great dependency on driving in this region due to train stations being fairly sparse.
