NCP. The tide goes out.
NCP, the car park giant, went under: 340 car parks, 700 jobs and 95 years of business gone. It may be the biggest sign yet of how fundamentally the way we live has changed.
THE GIST ON NCP: "When the Tide Goes Out"
What was NCP built on?
For most of the 20th century the daily commute was the organising principle of British city life. Car parks, coffee shops, sandwich bars, an entire urban economy designed around people who showed up at nine and left at five.
NCP was the infrastructure that made it possible.
What went wrong?
Then COVID happened. People worked from home and never fully came back. We are all hybrid working now. City centre footfall never recovered and the car parks sat half empty.
NCP was locked into long, inflexible leases on locations that had permanently lost their value. It had 305 million pounds in liabilities and no way out.
Is NCP the only one?
NCP will be the first, because the same logic applies to everything built around the daily commute: office blocks, rental units, transport links. No one has a plan for what comes next.
Every business is built on assumptions, that the behaviour you depend on continues and the tide stays in. You can't see the fragility when times are good. As Warren Buffett says, it's only when the tide goes out that you see who's been swimming naked.
Will city centre offices ever fill up again?
Your take. One tap, then see how everyone else voted.
Quick answers
What happened to NCP?
It went under, taking 340 car parks, 700 jobs and 95 years of business with it.
Why did it fail?
Commuting never fully returned after COVID, and NCP was locked into inflexible long term leases on locations that lost their value.
What were its liabilities?
305 million pounds, according to Huw.
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