steve hesmondhalgh

For the last decade or more, it has not just been “harder” to get planning permission for city centre car parks. In many places, it has been actively resisted.

That was deliberate. It was policy.

Local planning authorities made a clear decision that city centres should no longer be built around private cars. Parking was reduced, constrained, and in some cases quietly designed out of the system. Large new multi-storey car parks became increasingly difficult to justify, particularly in central locations.

This was not drift. It was direction.

And it was the right call.

City centres built around cars do not function particularly well. They are congested, inefficient, and dominated by land uses that add very little to the life of a place. For decades, too much space was given over to storing vehicles rather than supporting activity.

Planning policy began to correct that. Not dramatically, not overnight—but steadily. Fewer spaces required. More scrutiny. Less willingness to approve large, standalone parking in central areas.

Over time, the assumption that everyone would continue to drive into the centre quietly disappeared.

The problem is that not everyone noticed.

For years, large parts of the parking sector carried on as if nothing had changed. The model remained the same: large volumes, central locations, predictable demand. Long leases signed on the basis that commuter flows would continue more or less indefinitely.

But that assumption had already been undermined.

Even before 2020, the signs were there. Commuting patterns were beginning to soften. Retail was shifting. Some centres were already seeing declining footfall. Demand for parking still existed, but it was becoming less consistent, less reliable, and more uneven.

Planning policy had already started to squeeze the system. Not by banning parking, but by steadily reducing the conditions that made large-scale provision essential.

Then Covid accelerated everything.

Lockdowns emptied city centres almost overnight. That in itself was temporary. What followed was not.

Working from home became normal. The five-day commute disappeared for many. Travel patterns fractured. The steady, predictable demand that underpinned city centre parking was replaced by something far less stable.

Car parks did not suddenly become unnecessary. But they stopped behaving like dependable assets.

Busy one day. Quiet the next. Full on a Saturday. Half-empty midweek.

Covid did not create that shift. It forced it through faster than anyone was prepared for.

What planning policy had been pushing towards—less reliance on centralised, car-based access—was suddenly unavoidable.

But here is the uncomfortable part.

We have reduced parking on purpose.

We have not replaced it properly.

That contradiction is now visible everywhere.

A recent trip into a northern city centre makes the point. We drove straight past the park and ride without even considering it. Not because we had assessed it and rejected it—but because it simply didn’t feel like a viable option. Too uncertain, too inconvenient.

Instead, we did what most people still do.

Drove in.

Then spent twenty minutes circling, looking for somewhere to park. Eventually finding a space in a car park that, despite being “central”, still required a twenty-five minute walk back into the centre.

In the rain.

That is not a system that has moved beyond the car. It is a system stuck halfway through trying.

We have made driving less convenient.

We have not made the alternatives consistently better.

So what we are left with is neither one thing nor the other.

City centre parking demand is declining. That is by design. But it has not disappeared. Not completely, and not evenly.

At the same time, public transport in many places remains inconsistent. Active travel works for some journeys, not all. Edge-of-centre locations still depend heavily on the car.

The result is predictable.

Large car parks that are no longer full.

Ongoing demand that has not gone away.

And a planning system that has not yet decided how far to push the shift it has already started.

There are only a few options, and none of them are comfortable.

One is to keep going—continue reducing city centre parking and force the transition. Make driving progressively less attractive and rely on behaviour changing in response.

That will work eventually. But it will be painful in the meantime, particularly where alternatives are not yet strong enough.

Another is to manage what remains. Fewer spaces, higher prices, tighter control over who uses them. Short stay instead of long stay. Essential trips instead of routine commuting.

This is already happening in many places.

But it is not a solution. It is managed decline.

It does nothing to resolve the fundamental mismatch between the scale of infrastructure that exists and the level of demand that remains.

Pushing parking outward—park and ride, edge-of-centre provision—is often presented as the answer. Keep cars out of the centre without pretending they have disappeared.

But this only works if the onward journey is better than the alternative. In many places, it isn’t. People are not irrational. If the park and ride adds time, uncertainty or inconvenience, they simply will not use it.

Then there is redevelopment.

On paper, it is obvious. Remove the car park, build something more valuable.

In practice, it is selective. Some sites will go—those in the strongest locations, where values justify the cost. Many will not. Demolition is expensive. Structures are inflexible. Viability is not guaranteed.

Which leaves a large number of these buildings in an awkward position.

Not redundant.

Not fully used.

Not easy to replace.

That is the real challenge.

These car parks were built for a version of the city that no longer exists—one based on daily commuting, predictable flows, and the assumption that access meant driving.

That version has gone.

What has replaced it is less clear. More fragmented. Less consistent.

Planning has already made the strategic decision: city centres should not be dominated by cars.

But it has not yet delivered a system that fully works without them.

Until that gap is closed, we will continue to see the same thing.

Half-used multi-storey car parks sitting on valuable land.

Drivers circling for spaces that are still needed, just less often.

And a slow, uneven shift away from a model that has already been judged unsustainable.

We are not debating whether city centre car parks have a future.

We are deciding how quickly we are prepared to move beyond them—and whether we are honest enough to admit that we are not quite ready yet.