THERE was good news for motorists this week as Swindon became one of the cheapest places to buy petrol.

On Thursday, the Newport Street service station dropped its price to 99.7p a litre, the lowest level for five years.

Elsewhere across the town, supermarkets are also lowering their prices as the value of oil continues to fall.

The AA has said the average petrol price across the UK is 108.91p per litre but yesterday all the major supermarkets in Swindon were charging below this.

At 9am yesterday Tesco in Ocotal Way was charging 104.9p a litre, Sainsbury’s Bridgemead was charging 103.9p a litre and Asda in West Swindon was charging 103.7p a litre.

The Newport Street Garage was busy throughout the day as customers looked to take advantage of the low prices.

Velautham Sarveswaran, who has owned the garage since 2002, said: “We have sold it below £1 before but once it rose so much over I didn’t think it would drop again.

“It is nice to be so busy. We own three other garages in the Midlands and they are all below £1 as well.

“We have a business model to make sure we offer customers value for money so it was important to us we were the first garage in Swindon to drop so low.”

The AA has welcomed the drop in prices which they say will have a huge impact on living costs.

AA president Edmund King said: “A £50 cut to a two-car family’s monthly petrol bill is a huge boost after more than five years of squeeze on the necessities of modern life, including fuel.

“This week, a £1 litre has appeared over the horizon although it’s not guaranteed to appear in every town.

“In fact, many rural towns would say that predictions of petrol at 99.9p a litre are a bad joke as they continue to struggle with the pump price lottery.

“Even so, it has to be recognised that the supermarket price war that may have been a bit of a phoney in the past is a full-blooded fight now.

“Drivers increasingly gave them the cold shoulder through 2014, mainly because price-matching across a locality takes away the incentive to go specifically to a supermarket for fuel unless it has rock-bottom prices.”