Car park data & insight

We process 4 million data points every single day across 4,000+ UK car parks.

What does car park data actually tell you, and what can you do with it?

Data points processed every single day

1.5bn

Data points processed every year

4,000+

UK sites benchmarked across every sector

Car parks generate an incredible amount of data. When used correctly, this can completely transform how a site performs. The car park is also the first and last impression a visitor has of a business, and the insight it generates touches far more than just the car park itself.

Car park data shows how a site is actually being used, how that is changing over time, and where decisions should be focused next.

This article answers that question directly: what does car park data actually tell you, and what can you do with it?

What data does a car park actually generate?

ANPR generates thousands of car park data points every day. Entry and exit records are a small part of the bigger picture data can give you.

People interact with car parks in different ways, driven by habits or specific needs, such as requiring access to blue badge bays or driving electric vehicles that need spaces to recharge. Parking data can track how services are used over time, such as shifting payment habits.

With the right data, operators can access car park data analytics and reporting services across six key areas, each one answering a different question about how a site is performing.

Occupancy

Occupancy data tracks how many spaces are in use at any given time and checks whether peak periods correlate with sales. When troughs are identified, possible responses include:

Running promotions during quieter periods
Listing surplus space for pre-booking
Operating as pay and display outside standard business hours
Encouraging off-peak parking to level out demand

Our clients have seen an average 40% increase in space availability within the first six months of an ANPR solution being in place.

Stay duration

Stay duration data calculates average, longest and shortest stays on site. It identifies two things:

Potential abuse vehicles staying longer than expected occupying space for non-customers
Business performance whether visitors are spending reasonable time in store

It also measures whether promotions are working. If a meal deal or discount is running, stay duration should increase. If it does not, the promotion may need rethinking.

Capacity and peak periods

Capacity data tracks peaks and troughs to support shift planning and operational decisions. Key examples across sectors:

Retail used to review opening times, reducing staffing costs at quiet periods and increasing revenue at busy ones
Healthcare maps peak occupancy against visiting hours and clinic times to improve space availability
Education one university found parking 25% over capacity at certain times. Adjusting timetables eased pressure and improved safety. The same site found after-hours spaces being used by non-students, leading to a paid parking strategy that generated revenue from pre-bookings

Revenue data

Revenue data shows how much each payment option has generated over the last three months. Site operators use it to:

Track whether cashless options are keeping pace with visitor expectations
Identify stronger and weaker months
Spot seasonal patterns in payment volumes
Improve payment compliance

96% of transactions are contactless, showing the shift in user habits. Revenue data tells you whether your paid parking strategy is working and where it needs to change.

Vehicle data and EV insight

Vehicle data shows fuel types using the car park via DVLA data, tracking the proportion of EVs on site over time.

This provides a baseline for infrastructure planning, gauging when EV demand is high enough to justify chargers, and how many are needed.

Repeat visitor analysis

Repeat visitor data tracks how frequently visitors and permit holders return. All data is anonymised in line with GDPR. It informs three actions:

Introducing a loyalty scheme where high repeat visit rates exist but no scheme is in place
Rethinking an existing scheme where repeat visits are not increasing despite incentives
Triggering entry-point offers. Parkingeye data shows this can lift repeat visits to a specific tenant by up to 20%

Visit data and contravention trends

ANPR data covers everything on site from hourly to annual occurrences: traffic volume, entry and exit points, and contraventions. Tracking contravention trends over time shows whether enforcement is working and where rules may need tightening.

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What each car park data type can tell you

Data type	What it measures	Key stat
Occupancy	Space availability and congestion patterns	Our client saw an average 40% increase in space availability within 6 months
Stay duration	How long vehicles remain on site	Contraventions halved in 3 months; dropped to a quarter within 6 months
Capacity and peaks	Busiest and quietest periods by hour and day	One university found parking 25% over capacity at peak times, data led to timetable changes
Revenue data	Which payment methods are generating income	83% of users on modern ANPR kiosks now choose card payment
Vehicle and EV	Fuel type breakdown via DVLA data	Sites with EV chargers see at least 5 extra visitors per day
Repeat visitors	Frequency of return visits	Loyalty triggers can lift repeat visits to a specific tenant by up to 20%

Using parking data to improve existing solutions

Before adding new solutions to a car park, it is worth examining what the existing data says about current performance. Car park data can show which solutions are being used, which are underperforming, and which are generating congestion or friction.

Parking data can identify which solutions can be expanded to increase their impact. It can also surface what is not working. A site might be paying for something that is not helping customers and being overlooked.

Example: reviewing payment infrastructure

Data can show that one model of contactless machine is not being used as frequently as kiosks elsewhere on the site. That information can be used to identify whether a machine needs moving to a better location, or whether investing in additional kiosks would be more effective than persisting with the underperforming one.

Monitoring solutions and adjusting accordingly means investment maintains its effectiveness and solutions continue to have a positive effect on the car park.

What car park data can drive

Car park data has informed a wide range of operational and commercial decisions across different sectors.

The right EV infrastructure

Fuel analysis data provides an accurate projection of EV demand based on the actual vehicle mix on site. In one case, the data showed three chargers would meet demand rather than five, reducing investment.

Sites with EV chargers in place have seen at least five extra visitors per day, and parking data allows the return on that investment to be tracked over time.

Understanding footfall and competitor change

Car park data has driven significant commercial decisions, including whether to open a petrol filling station and whether capacity existed to integrate with a fast food retailer.

When one retail client became concerned about a nearby competitor, ANPR reports showed visitor numbers had actually increased but stay duration had shortened. Layering those two data sets revealed visitors were making short-trip purchases then going elsewhere for their main shop. That insight directly informed a targeted promotions strategy to convert short-stayers into longer visits.

Key outcomes identified through parking data:

Auto-pay free-flow solutions lifted repeat shopper rates by 15% or more
Opening time adjustments reduced costs at quiet periods and increased revenue at peak times

Building a business case, including planning permission

ANPR data provides a year-on-year performance record and benchmarks a site against comparable car parks. One North of England university transformed parking revenues from £2,000 per month to £50,000 in their highest month after migrating to ANPR.

At Wye Valley Visitor Centre, ANPR data provided the precise traffic impact figures required for a planning application:

“Statistics gathered from our car park by Parkingeye gave us precise traffic impact data which was needed to obtain Planning Permission. This would not have been possible without Parkingeye.”

Wye Valley Visitor Centre

Improving the customer and staff experience

Data informs adjustments across EV provision, staff parking, visiting hours and payment options, all of which reduce congestion and improve the experience for users.

At one major UK NHS Trust:

Visitor complaints fell from 25% of all complaints received to just 0.01%
50,000 additional cars per month began using the facilities
Traffic stopped spilling into surrounding roads, improving safety and access

The difference between site data and sector data

Knowing a car park’s occupancy at 11am on a Tuesday is useful. Knowing how that compares to 3,700+ car parks across the same sector is valuable in a way that internal car park data alone cannot match.

5×

Parkingeye gathers ANPR data from over 3,700 car parks and almost 600 clients, making it five times larger than the nearest competitor.

This provides a huge amount of information to analyse and draw comparisons from. ANPR reports can cover:

Tariff breakdowns and revenue by payment channel
Peak period frequency and average durations
Daily, monthly and yearly comparisons
Trends in capacity and utilisation
Benchmarking against sector norms and local competitors
Types of contravention and patterns of abuse
Car park reporting dashboards and scheduled exports for finance and operations teams

This benchmarked parking data helps gain a deeper insight into seasonality, capacity and average behaviour. Using it, site operators can make informed decisions on pricing and strategy, reducing the likelihood of empty spaces and improving profit margin. Parkingeye clients have seen parking revenue increase by up to 40% as a direct result of ANPR-informed management decisions.

Sector data answers a question site data alone cannot: is this car park performing as well as it should be, compared to others like it?

More on the full range of reporting options is available on our Reporting & Data Services page.

Results Parkingeye clients have seen from acting on their car park data

Outcome	Result
Space availability	Average 40% increase within 6 months
Parking violations	Halved within 3 months; reduced to a quarter within 6
Revenue uplift	Up to 40% increase in parking revenue
Visitor complaints	Fell from 25% of all complaints to 0.01%
Additional monthly visitors	50,000 more cars per month
Throughput at free-flow sites	9 to nearly 12 cars per minute on a 700-space site
Repeat shopper rates	Lifted by 15%+ via auto-pay free-flow
EV charging sessions	65% increase after Bay Management protected EV bays

The different types of parking data analytics

The use of car park data analytics to streamline operations and improve decision-making is something every business can benefit from. Most modern parking management systems support all four levels, each one answering a different kind of question.

Descriptive analytics

What happened

The most common type. It summarises raw data into a form people can easily understand, revealing key metrics such as repeat visits, the most popular dates and times, and average duration. Strong visualisation tools make this actionable rather than just informational.

Diagnostic analytics

Why it happened

Goes one level deeper by exploring issues in greater detail to identify the source of a problem. For car parks, this might mean cross-referencing a drop in Saturday occupancy against local events, competitor activity or seasonal factors.

Predictive analytics

What is likely to happen

Uses historical trends to forecast future conditions, supporting better decisions around planning, budgeting and investment. For example, projecting EV demand before committing to charging infrastructure, or anticipating seasonal peaks before they arrive.

Prescriptive analytics

What to do about it

A combination of the above three, helping to determine the best course of action. This is where data moves from insight to recommendation, suggesting specific changes to pricing, layout, operating hours or services.

Data analytics can also identify problems before they occur, reducing the actions needed to correct them and saving time. In identifying inefficiencies, the right questions become clear:

What was the cause of the problem?
Why did it happen?
What is the prediction for the future?
What is the next course of action?

The type of analytics applied to car park data determines how deeply a site operator can answer the question of what the data actually shows. Descriptive analytics explains what happened. Diagnostic analytics explains why. Predictive analytics forecasts what is likely to happen next. Prescriptive analytics combines all three to identify the most appropriate course of action.

How to access your car park data with ParkIQ

ParkIQ is our car park management system and data platform. It gives site operators access to the ANPR data generated by their car park through a configurable reporting interface, covering occupancy, revenue, stay duration, vehicle data and contravention trends.

The platform covers daily visitor numbers, contraventions, revenue by payment channel, permit management and capacity data. Bespoke reports can be configured for specific time periods, use cases or stakeholder formats.

Full details of what ParkIQ includes and how it works are on the ParkIQ product page.

“We receive detailed monthly reporting of ANPR data across the portfolio. We’ve had the same report type for years at our own request because it’s clear and easy to understand. This data is analysed by our finance teams to provide useful insights.”

Euro Garages, working with Parkingeye across more than 350 UK sites

Is your site getting the most from its car park data?

Car parks and the people who use them do not stand still. Parking data helps site operators follow trends and adapt how a car park is managed to provide the best possible service.

In healthcare, for example, car park data has been used to identify congestion patterns linked to clinic times, enabling adjustments to visiting hours and layout that improved access without requiring additional space.

Our own research found that only 3% of healthcare managers believed parking technology could yield rich behavioural data or create a crucial revenue stream. Not because the data was not there, but because it was not being surfaced or explained. That gap exists in every sector.

Research finding	Stat
Healthcare managers who associate ANPR only with enforcement	40%
Healthcare managers who believe parking data could yield commercial insight	3%
Healthcare sites where parking was described as a “headache”	63%+
Healthcare sites where car park congestion creates backlogs on surrounding routes	85%
Education sites that use paid parking	9%
Universities using a modern permit solution	Less than 1%

Working with a car park management partner typically means access to regular data reviews, sector benchmarking, and account-level support in interpreting what the data shows.

See what your car park data is telling you

We will review how your site is performing, benchmark it against your sector, and show you where the opportunities are.

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Reporting & Data Services