NCP administrators in talks to sell scores of car park sites | Money News

A privately owned real estate group is in talks to buy scores of NCP car parks months after the historic operator collapsed into administration.

Sky News has learnt that Martin Property Group has emerged as the preferred bidder for roughly 100 NCP sites.

The talks with Martin Property Group come about six weeks after GreenPoint Partnets, which owned about 30 of the group’s car parks, served notice on the administrators at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

The move prompted NCP bosses to warn its remaining workforce that additional redundancies were likely, following job losses when 20 sites were closed earlier this year.

NCP, traces its roots back to 1931, collapsed earlier this year in a move which administrators blamed on shifts in commuting and driving habits.

“The high concentration of long-term, inflexible leases has meant the company has been unable to reduce costs in line with revenue or to exit loss-making sites, resulting in ongoing trading losses,” PwC said in a statement at the time.

NCP had been owned by Park24, a Tokyo-listed company, since 2017.

Prior to that, it was managed by Macquarie European Infrastructure Fund for a decade.

The company tried to engineer a formal financial restructuring during the Covid pandemic in 2021, but was thwarted by a furious response from landlords who argued that the demands for rent write-offs were unacceptable.

A spokesman for PwC said in response to an enquiry from Sky News on Friday: “We are in advanced stages of agreeing a sale of the majority of NCP’s operations to a preferred bidder.

“This is a significant and positive step towards securing the future of the business.”

Martin Property Group has been contacted for comment.