Parking bays widened for bigger cars, says NCP

Car parking spaces are having to be made bigger to meet the growing size of family cars and 4x4s, the UK’s largest car park provider has said.

National Car Parks (NCP) said it had widened some bays in London, Manchester and Bournemouth to cope with the popularity of increasingly large cars.

The firm told the Times it planned to widen parking bays “wherever possible”.

Accident Exchange, which loans courtesy cars, estimated there had been a 35% rise in parking accidents since 2014.

NCP said there was an “extremely fine balance” between the demand for wider spaces and the need for the most number of parking spots as possible.

However, it told the Times: “We are moving towards making the bays wider as we recognise that vehicles are growing in size, especially SUVs.”

The standard parking space in the UK is 15.7ft (4.8m) in length, by 7.8ft (2.4m) in width.

However, the latest models of the Audi Q7, Land Rover Discovery, BMW X5 and the Mercedes GL-Class are all longer than 4.8m, while many smaller models have also increased in size.