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You might already have guessed that we love London here at Time Out. We think it’s one of the best cities on the planet. From its world-renowned culture and its enviable food scene to the fact that you can find the Rosetta Stone and a jar of pickled moles with its own Twitter account in the same postcode.
But, we’ll admit there are some things we’d love to change about the place, particularly the fact that it’s a pretty pricy spot to call home. Unsurprisingly, for somewhere that’s usually at the top of lists detailing the most expensive places to live in the world, London is home to UK’s most expensive street (Kensington Palace Gardens, fyi, where the average property price is a cool £29,898,000), the most expensive meal ever served (£13,000 for three diners at Le Gavroche), and, recently, what we expect is the most expensive pint in the country at £80.
Now the capital can also claim another costly title, with one London borough being named the most expensive place to drive a car in the UK. The unenviable winner is Westminster, according to car rental business Riverdale Leasing.
To get the figures, the company researched the average cost of insurance, fuel, parking, repairs, serving and road tax in the 50 most populous areas of the UK in May this year and found that drivers in SW1 spend a whopping £8,722 per year on their cars.
The figure is a huge £4,922 more than the average British driver spends per annum – which they estimate is £3,800 – and £3,217 more than the average driver in Liverpool, which is the second most expensive UK area to drive in. And this is all without factoring in the cost of buying the car itself.
The London Congestion Charge, which costs £15 per day, and the fact that Westminster is one of the most expensive places to park full stop, is what pushes up the price in the borough, as well as extra charges for pootling down toll roads and tunnels and paying Clean Air Zone charges.
If you hadn’t already thought about pivoting to two wheels for the sake of the planet, maybe an extra few thousand quid in your pocket will get you investing in some lycra.
Ditch the car and have a mosey around a secret London island instead.
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