National Car Parks

National Car Parks (NCP) is the United Kingdom’s largest and longest standing private car park operator, with over 150,000 spaces across more than 500 car parks in towns, cities, airports and London Underground and National Rail stations.

History
NCP was founded in 1931 by Colonel Frederick Lucas. In October 1948, Ronald Hobson founded Central Car Parks, joined by his partner Sir Donald Gosling after the pair invested £200 in a bombsite in Holborn, central London to create a car park. In 1959 Central Car Parks took over NCP from Anne Lucas, the widow of Colonel Lucas.

Hobson and Gosling expanded the company by recognising the under developed status of many post-World War II British cities and towns. The pair began buying bombsites in central London, converting them and large garage sites into car parks. NCP then began managing sites on behalf of third parties.

By the mid-1990s NCP had become one of the most successful private businesses. In 1998, after a late abortion of the flotation of the business on the London Stock Exchange, the company was bought by US-based property and travel services provider Cendant for £801million with Hobson, Gosling, and their family trusts who owned 72.5% of the National Parking Corporation taking £580million.

The new owners re-focused the company’s operations, changing NCP from a mainly property owning company into a more service-focused organisation in the broader transport sector. In 1999, NCP launched the UK’s first private-public partnership – setting up a joint venture with Manchester City Council to establish NCP Manchester Ltd (NML).

In 2002, UK-based Cinven purchased NCP from Cendant. NCP began to develop business contracts in the provision of enforcement services for local authorities, vehicle removals and debt recovery, where by 2005 it had become market leader in its field.

NCP was sold to 3i in July 2005 for £555million, with 3i saying it would continue to grow NCP as a service-oriented and public-outsourcing company In order to maximise the growth potential of both sides of the business.

Current operations
In 2007 National Car Parks Limited was acquired by Macquarie European Infrastructure Fund II. Today NCP hosts car parking across the UK, supporting some of the most popular public services such as London Heathrow, Manchester Arena and Birmingham New Street.

In 2013 NCP launched a new website and online strategy enabling customers to pre-book their parking at over 100 of their rail, city and town centre car parks. This was an industry first for the UK market.

Events
National Car Parks has become very popular with numerous industries looking for an alternative style venue.

Since 2010 House of Holland has booked out the Brewer Street NCP to host their catwalk shows for London Fashion Week previous attendees have included Alexa Chung, Jamie Winstone and Rachel Bilson.

In Cardiff, Evans Cycles have created the Urban Duel, a BMX racing event that takes place in NCP Dumfries Place. There are plans to host this event at other car parks around the country.

Art Drive exhibited its collection of classic BMW’s designed by famous artists including Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Jeff Koons and Roy Lichtenstein at the Great Eastern Street NCP in Shoreditch.

As part of the Manchester International Festival, National Car Parks arranged a live relay screening of Kenneth Branagh’s new play Macbeth with hundreds of funs turning up to the open air screening.

Controversies
In the early 1990s NCP was accused of planting spies in rival group Europarks, but Britain's then biggest industrial espionage trial ended with the full acquittal of NCP chief executive Gordon Layton.

In November 2013, following the announcement that Hull was to be the UK City of Culture 2017, NCP Managing Director Duncan Bowins took to popular social media website facebook and branded the city a sh**ehole - despite the fact that his car parks take over £1 million from the city each year. This crude slur led to Duncan Bowins winning the Award for Most Inappropriate Use of Social Media at the Hull Daily Mail end of year Angus Young Awards 2013.