£43 for six hours in the most expensive car park

Drivers must pay £43.20 for a six-hour stay at the National Car Parks facility, a survey by the Evening Standard shows.

One motoring organisation called the fee "mind-boggling".

The findings come as Westminster announced it is slashing the cost of staying at its Masterpark car parks with an "easyJet"-style pricing policy.

Motorists will be able to park for only 20p an hour under the new scheme, which links fees to demand.

This compares with NCP's Pavilion Road site, near Harrods, where an hour costs £7.20.

Our survey gauged the cost of parking for one hour or for six hours, the length of a typical shopping trip plus lunch.

The car park with the highest hourly fee was the NCP in Berners Street, Bloomsbury - £8.

The second most expensive in central London over six hours was the NCP at Welbeck Street, W1, where drivers must pay £32. One hour's parking costs £6.40.

By contrast, in nearby Oxford Street, Westminster's Masterpark charges £24.50 for six hours and £5 for an hour - and it is not even included in the council's budget scheme yet.

The fee to park at a roadside meter in the Welbeck Street area is £4 per hour. Today, AA president Edmund King said: "In most car parks in central London it costs more to park your wheels for an hour than it does to employ a babysitter, - the difference being that the car is often not looked after in car parks.

"Some of the charges are mind-boggling and certainly keep many shoppers out of central London."

Our survey also found that many NCPs have a minimum two-hour tariff, making parking potentially too expensive for shoppers wanting to be there for only an hour.

Westminster council's most expensive hourly rate is £6 at its Trafalgar Square car park. Its most expensive for six hours is £25 at Leicester Square and in Soho. The City of London's most expensive fees are at its London Wall facility, where it costs £3 for an hour's stay and £18 for six hours. Danny Chalkley, Westminster's cabinet member for environment and transport, said: "Many drivers in London are put off by expensive charges. Now they will be able to park far more cheaply on a first-come-first-served basis.

"We have seen the huge success of similar pricing schemes employed by easyJet for their passengers, and hope to emulate this."

Westminster says that since the launch of the congestion charge five years ago, retailers have complained that customers have been deterred by the £8 daily charge.

It hopes its new system will attract 30 per cent more drivers to central London car parks.

An NCP spokesman said: "Comparisons of prices across London can be misleading as they vary across different time bands and locations. We always try to keep our prices competitive and have recently frozen our tariffs for all our central London car parks. In addition, we offer discounted season tickets to regular customers.

"We are investing in our car parks to refresh their quality and safety as well as increasing the number of customer-facing staff. "