Car Parks:

Monetising Underutilised Property and Infrastructure Assets

Learnings from our project with Places for London on reimagining car parks.

Watch the webinar discussion and download the project case study pack.

The million-pound opportunity hiding in plain sight.

Across the UK, there are more than 10,000 car parks - and over 50% are underutilised. Peak usage rarely exceeds 60%, and weekend occupancy drops as low as 14%, leaving millions of square metres sitting dormant.

These are not just empty spaces - they are untapped economic and community assets. For landowners and operators, they represent a rare opportunity: to create new value from what already exists, without major capital investment, planning delays or long development cycles.

But the challenge isn’t spotting the potential - it’s knowing what to activate, who it serves, and whether there is demand before committing resources. What’s needed is a way to design, test and scale new uses quickly, safely and based on real-world evidence.

How Places for London are reimagining car parks

Places for London is Transport for London’s (TfL) property company, managing a £1.54 billion investment portfolio across over 5,500 acres of land across London, generating £101.9 million in annual gross rental income, including 77 car parks with over 10,000 parking bays.

We worked with Places for London on the Beyond Parking initiative, where we’re rethinking how these assets can be repositioned to deliver stronger financial and social returns - using a repeatable venture-building methodology.

A conversation with Lal Bahadur, Portfolio Manager, Commercial Assets, at Places for London

Beyond Parking: Case Study Pack

We applied our Design, Test and Activate model to help TfL’s property company, and one of London’s largest landowners, Places for London, turn their underutilised car parks into validated, revenue-generating and community-serving assets.

Design - Assessed site potential through local demand mapping, usage analysis and surrounding catchments to identify commercially and socially viable opportunity areas.
Test - Conducted structured customer discovery, evidence gathering and feasibility assessment to shortlist which concepts could deliver value in practice.
Activate - Developed pilot plans by engaging potential delivery partners, outlining operating models and defining what success would require at site level.