Parking in Rugby: £5 All Day, or £10 Right Next Door

Checked 30 August 2026. Rugby has two parking authorities, and which one you are dealing with decides everything from the price to who gets your appeal.

• Rugby Borough Council runs the ten town centre car parks, just over 1,000 spaces between them.
• Warwickshire County Council runs every on-street bay, every resident permit and every yellow line.

The single most useful fact on this page: at the long-stay car parks the same eleven hours costs either £5 or £10 depending on which entrance you turn into, and the two cheapest are not the two nearest the shops.

Every council car park, and what it costs

All tariffs are from each car park’s own page on the council’s town centre parking listing.

Charges apply 8am to 7pm, Monday to Saturday. Where Sunday charging applies, the council states hours of 10am to 5pm at John Barford, North Street, Little Church Street and the Town Hall. Chestnut Field’s page says £1 all day on a Sunday without giving the hours.

Every car park is open 24 hours except John Barford, which is open 5am to 7pm only. That matters if you were planning to leave a car overnight in the cheapest one.

Four things follow from the table.

• All day, use John Barford or Westway. Both are £5 for eleven hours. Railway Terrace, immediately alongside John Barford, is £10 for exactly the same stay.
• Saturday is Newbold Road’s cheap day. £3 for a long stay against £10 the rest of the week, across 209 spaces.
• Sunday is only half free. Gas Street, Newbold Road, Railway Terrace, Westway and Old Market Place cost nothing. John Barford, North Street, Chestnut Field, Little Church Street and the Town Hall charge £1. A car park that was free yesterday is not necessarily free today, and a £1 ticket is still a ticket you have to buy.
• The four short-stay car parks cap out at three hours. There is no all-day option at North Street, Chestnut Field, Little Church Street or the Town Hall.

Payment is by cash or card at the machine, by RingGo app, text or web, by calling RingGo on 01788 482030, or with cash or card at a RingGo paypoint in the town centre. Each car park has its own RingGo location code, printed on the signs.

One stale notice to ignore: the Old Market Place car park page still carries a warning that the car park will close overnight on 26 to 27 March 2026. That date has long passed and the notice has not been taken down.

Commuting: £400 a year, or £950

If you park all day, every working day, the season ticket maths is stark.

Council season tickets are sold for four car parks only, valid from the 1st of the month, and take up to ten working days to issue:

Station parking is run by Avanti West Coast, not the council. National Rail’s station data for Rugby lists 701 spaces across three car parks, 15 of them accessible:

• Mill Road multi-storey, CV21 1PR, 525 spaces
• Murray Road, 126 spaces
• Railway Terrace station car park, CV21 3HS, 50 spaces

All three are open 24 hours, have CCTV, and charge the same: £10 a day, £4.50 on Saturdays and Sundays, £110 a month, £308 for three months and £950 a year. Different rates apply to non-rail users, and staff have to quote those.

So a commuter pays £950 at the station or £400 at John Barford, a difference of £550 a year. The catch is real, though: John Barford shuts at 7pm and does not open until 5am, so a late train home is a problem the station car park does not have.

On-street parking, and why Rugby is cheaper than the rest of the county

On-street bays belong to Warwickshire County Council. Its published street parking fees for Rugby still carry the heading “On-street parking tariffs from 1 March 2024”:

The south of the county went up on 1 April 2026. Rugby’s tariff has not moved since March 2024, so an hour on the street here is 40p cheaper than the same hour in Leamington or Warwick. That gap is the county’s to close whenever it chooses, so treat it as a saving rather than a right.

Read the sign before you pay. Some Rugby streets allow only 30 minutes, one hour or two hours, whatever the tariff board says. Payment is by cash or RingGo.

Blue badge and disabled parking

• On-street, a blue badge parks free in any pay and display bay in Warwickshire, for as long as the badge is validly displayed. That is the county’s rule and it applies across the whole county.
• In the council’s car parks, the position is less generous than people assume. The borough publishes a count of blue badge bays at each car park but no free parking concession for badge holders. We could find nothing on its pages saying a badge exempts you from the tariff, so budget for paying.

Blue badge bays, from each car park’s page:

That is 42 bays across the town centre, and Old Market Place has none at all. If you need one and the town is busy, John Barford and Newbold Road are the two with real capacity.

Motorcycles are provided for at only two car parks: North Street has seven bays and the Town Hall has two. Everywhere else the count is zero. On-street, motorcycles and mopeds park free in resident, pay and display and limited stay bays, up to whatever maximum the sign gives.

To apply for a blue badge, start at the borough’s blue badge page. To ask for a disabled bay outside your home, that is a county council request.

Resident permits: £25, and seven zones

Warwickshire County Council issues resident and visitor permits in Rugby, through NSL. The borough council does not, whatever the postcode on your bill says.

• £25 per permit per year, for both resident and visitor permits
• Apply, renew or change a permit at warwickshire.nsl-apply.co.uk
• Help: warwickshireparking@nslservices.co.uk or 0333 003 0033
• Out of hours, including weekends, if you cannot allocate a vehicle to a virtual visitor permit online, ring 01296 791496

Rugby has seven permit zones, R0 to R6. The county publishes the streets in each, and the important distinction is between streets that have permit bays and streets that merely sit inside a zone.

• R0 covers Albert Square, Albert Street, Bank Street, Castle Street, Chestnut Field, Church Street, Henry Street, James Street, North Street, Regent Place and Regent Street. None of these has permit parking spaces. You can hold a zone permit; there is nowhere on your own street to use it.
• R1 has permit bays on Alexandra Road, Acacia Grove, Avon Street, Dale Street, Duke Street, Essex Street, Hill Street, Holbrook Avenue, Kew Road, Kimberley Road, King Edward Road, King Street, Lancaster Road, Lodge Road, Manor Road, Maple Grove, Park Road, Poplar Grove, Princes Street, Railway Terrace, St John Street and Sycamore Grove.
• R2 has permit bays on Abbey Street, Arnold Street, Bath Street, Cambridge Street, Charlotte Street, Claremont Road, Craven Road, Clifton Road, Cross Street, Earl Street, Graham Road, Grosvenor Road, Lower Hillmorton Road, Lucas Court, Market Street, Murrayian Close, Murray Road, Oxford Street, Paradise Street, Queen Victoria Street, Railway Terrace and Sandown Road.
• R3 has bays on Union Street. Dunchurch Road is in the zone with no bays.
• R4 is Elsee Road. R5 is Horton Crescent.
• R6 has bays on Vicarage Road. Bilton Road is in the zone with no bays.

Street-by-street restrictions are on the county’s traffic order map at maps.warwickshire.gov.uk/tro.

If you get a ticket

Which council chases you depends on where you were parked.

• Off-street, in a council car park. The PCN number starts with the letters RU. Pay within 14 days and you get a 50 per cent reduction. Pay or appeal through the borough’s parking fine page. Check the alleged contravention on the notice before you decide which you are doing.
• On-street. That is Warwickshire County Council’s, and the borough will not deal with it. Start at warwickshire.gov.uk/parking.

More Rugby local information: bin collection days, roadworks and travel, council tax bands and train times to London.