Passengers stranded at Gatwick Airport as parking company goes bust and abandons cars across Sussex and Surrey

Gatwick First Parking appears to have stopped trading

Passengers have been stranded as police search for their cars (Getty Images)

Hundreds of passengers arriving back into Gatwick Airport found themselves stranded after the meet and greet car parking firm they’d used abruptly stopped trading.

Gatwick First Parking, which isn’t officially affiliated with the airport, had been operating for 10 years, keeping clients’ cars in a secure CCTV monitored compound.

But the company seems to have ceased trading, leaving over 100 vehicles abandoned in sites in Surrey and Sussex. There doesn’t currently appear to be a winding up order against the company – a court order that forces an insolvent company into compulsory liquidation.

Sussex Police helped reunite cars with their owners, tracking down around 120 vehicles plus car keys, which had been left in an office in Surrey. The police are still looking for around 30 cars that they’ve found the keys for.

The Gatwick First Parking website, gatwickfirstparking.co.uk, currently has the message that it has been suspended.

Matthew Waring, 28, arrived back in the UK after spending a week in Cape Verde with his girlfriend Carly Hale, 27, to discover their car was missing. The couple had paid £60 to leave their Honda Civic with Gatwick First Parking.

He told MailOnline: “We went to the car park where the 'meeting point' was but nobody was there. We were told by someone that they had heard the company had gone bust and both Carly and I were extremely worried at this point.

“I phoned the police but they said they were not dealing with it as it was a matter for trading standards.

“We had to wait at the airport for 14 hours. It was depressing, we were tired, fed up and miserable. We did not know if we were ever going to get our car back. I did not know if it had been stolen or where it was.

“We eventually found the car parked on an industrial estate. We thought it was going to be left in a secure car park but it was just parked by a kerb.”

Police have encouraged people to only use official Gatwick parking services in the wake of the incident.

Sergeant Darren Taylor said: "It's essential that Gatwick Airport passengers use official on-airport parking, or companies registered with Gatwick's off-airport approved parking operators scheme only, to avoid this sort of thing from happening.

"We're carrying out further inquiries to locate the outstanding vehicles, and the owners of those vehicles will be contacted and kept up to date. Our priority is to find and return their vehicles to them as soon as we possibly can."