Birmingham may be the UK’s second city, but it has come first in a table of the most expensive cities to own a car.
In fact, with an average annual cost of more than £3,300 when taking into account fuel, insurance, and parking, owning a car in Birmingham is almost £400 more expensive per year than in Manchester - the second most expensive city - and more than twice as expensive as for the average car owner in Exeter. Those were the findings of a study by KwikFit, who point to the eye-watering £785 per year it costs for Birmingham’s most expensive resident’s parking permit as a factor in the results.
Once world renowned as a bastion of car production, the study comes at a time when drivers in Birmingham are still reeling from the announcement of a plan by the city’s Labour-led council that it says will ensure ‘the car is no longer king’, a move viewed by many as a declaration of war on private car ownership that would see such vehicles banned from major routes and from making journeys crossing the city centre.
London sits in third spot, behind both Birmingham and Manchester, with Belfast and Preston rounding off the top five. Leeds, Liverpool, and Nottingham all benefitted from the absence of paid-for resident’s parking permits in those cities. London did top the list when it came to insurance costs alone. The study found that the average annual premium varied by 156% from cheapest to most expensive, with drivers in the capital paying more than two-and-a-half times that of those in Exeter. Liverpool came second on the list of highest average car insurance premiums.
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