Britain Has Lost Four in Five Petrol Stations Since the 1960s as Fuel Deserts Spread

Filling up has quietly become harder for millions of drivers, and not just because of the price. Britain now has around 8,300 fuel forecourts, down from roughly 40,000 in the late 1960s, which means the country has lost close to four in five of its petrol stations in a single lifetime. The closures are still happening, and in some rural areas drivers now face a real drive simply to reach a working pump.

For most town and city drivers the change is barely noticeable, with a supermarket forecourt rarely far away. But for people in the countryside, on the coast and in the Highlands and islands, the slow disappearance of the local filling station is turning into a genuine problem, raising the risk of so called fuel deserts where the nearest pump can be many miles off.

How many petrol stations Britain has lost

The scale of the decline is striking. Industry data has tracked forecourt numbers falling from tens of thousands in the 1960s to a little over 8,000 today. The pace has slowed from the steep losses of past decades, but sites are still closing at a rate of a few hundred a year, with very few new ones opening to replace them.

What has changed is not how much fuel we buy but where we buy it. A small number of high volume supermarket forecourts now sell a large share of the country’s petrol and diesel, while the traditional independent station on the edge of a village has been squeezed out. That concentration keeps prices keen near big stores, but it leaves far thinner coverage everywhere else, and it is in those gaps that the problems start.

Why forecourts keep closing

Several pressures are pushing in the same direction. Fuel retailing runs on slim margins, and a small forecourt selling modest volumes struggles to cover rising costs for staff, energy, compliance and card processing fees. When the owner retires or the lease ends, the land is often worth more for housing or a convenience store than for keeping the pumps running.

The shift to electric cars adds another layer. As more drivers plug in, long term demand for petrol and diesel is set to fall, which makes investing in ageing fuel infrastructure harder to justify. The result is a network that is slowly shrinking even as the cars on the road still overwhelmingly run on liquid fuel, with petrol prices a constant worry after they hit a two year high this spring.

The rural drivers being left behind

The squeeze falls hardest on rural communities. Where a village loses its only garage, residents face longer trips to fill up, less competition to keep prices down, and the constant worry of running low on a quiet road far from help. Drivers in remote parts of Scotland have reported pump prices well above £2 a litre, a world away from the supermarket deals available in cities.

There is some help. The Rural Fuel Duty Relief scheme gives a 5p per litre discount at qualifying forecourts in designated remote areas, including parts of the Scottish islands and the Highlands. The catch is that the 5p figure has not kept pace with inflation since it was introduced, so its real value has been eroded as pump prices have climbed. For many remote drivers, the discount no longer comes close to closing the gap with mainland prices, and it does nothing to bring back a forecourt that has already shut.

How to avoid being caught short

A shrinking network rewards a little planning, especially on long journeys and country trips. A few habits will keep you out of trouble.

• Do not run the tank too low on rural routes. Treat a quarter of a tank as your refuel point once you leave built up areas.
• Fill up before you reach remote stretches, such as long single carriageway roads, national parks or the approach to the coast.
• Use a fuel price app to find the cheapest nearby pump. The government’s Fuel Finder scheme now requires retailers to publish live prices, making it easier to compare costs near you.
• Plan refuelling stops on long trips in advance rather than gambling on finding an open station late at night.
• Remember that the cheapest fuel is usually at large supermarket forecourts, so top up there when you pass one rather than waiting.

What happens next

The Fuel Finder scheme should at least sharpen competition by making prices easier to see, which helps drivers everywhere. But it does nothing to put pumps back in places that have lost them. As the electric transition gathers pace, the commercial case for small rural forecourts will only get harder, and more closures look likely over the coming years even as charging points slowly fill some of the gap.

For now, the practical lesson is simple. The days of assuming there will always be a petrol station around the next corner are fading, particularly away from the big towns. A full tank before a long rural drive, and a price app on your phone, are the cheapest insurance against being caught out with the needle on empty and nowhere to stop.

What a fuel desert really means

The forecourt count did not fall by accident. The biggest losses came in the 1980s and 1990s, when supermarkets moved into fuel and used cheap petrol to draw shoppers in. Selling at wafer thin margins to fill their car parks, the big chains undercut the corner garage, and thousands of small sites simply could not compete. Tighter environmental rules on underground fuel tanks added another expense that many independents could not afford, and a fresh wave of them closed for good.

A fuel desert is the point at which that thinning network leaves a community with no reasonable access to a pump. Rural campaigners and the convenience store sector have warned for years that parts of the countryside are close to that line, with some drivers already travelling 20 miles or more each way to refuel. Where it happens, the loss is not only convenience. It hits older residents, carers and small businesses hardest, and it strips out the local price competition that helps keep a lid on what everyone pays.

The drivers with the fewest options often pay the most. Motorway service stations, where a captive market has nowhere else to go, routinely charge well above the national average, sometimes 20p a litre or more over a nearby supermarket. The same logic applies in remote areas served by a single forecourt, where less competition almost always means a higher price at the pump and little a local driver can do about it.

Electric charging is slowly arriving to fill part of the gap, and some closed forecourts are reopening as charging hubs. But the rollout is uneven, and rural areas that have lost their petrol station are often the same places waiting longest for reliable rapid chargers. For the millions still driving petrol and diesel cars, that leaves a network shrinking faster than its replacement is being built, so it pays to know your own area’s weak spots before you need fuel in a hurry.

Sources:

• https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/fuel-watch/
• https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rural-fuel-duty-relief-scheme
• https://www.petrolprices.co.uk/fuel-finder-enforcement-may-2026.php