Parking in Ashford: £1.30 an Hour, £6 or £13.20 All Day

The hourly rate is the same in almost every council car park in the borough: £1.30, charged in 5p steps, with a minimum payment of 65p for half an hour. So the hourly price is not the decision. The decision is where you leave the car if you are staying more than four hours, because that is where the price doubles.

Everything below was checked on 1 September 2026 against Ashford Borough Council’s own car park pages and the operators’ own tariff pages, each linked beside the figure.

Car parks in Ashford

Sources: the council’s individual pages for Civic Centre and Stour Centre, Elwick Place, Vicarage Lane, Dover Place, Station Road, Elwick Road, Victoria Road, Flour Mills and Adley’s Yard.

Two of those do not follow the standard tariff. Adley’s Yard is cheaper, at £1.10 an hour with a 55p minimum, and it takes no cash at all: RingGo only. Elwick Place, the cinema car park, is a barrier and camera site with a stepped tariff instead of an hourly one, and it is the only car park in the borough with no 23-hour maximum stay:

• up to 2 hours, £2.60
• up to 3 hours, £3.90
• up to 4 hours, £5.20
• up to 5 hours, £6.50
• more than 5 hours, £13.20

Car parks in Tenterden

Sources: Recreation Ground Road, Tenterden Leisure Centre, Bridewell Lane and Station Road.

Tenterden has two local exceptions the council does not advertise widely:

• Ivy Court Surgery patients can park free for up to an hour in the section of Recreation Ground Road car park opposite the surgery, for a pre-booked appointment. You still have to take a ticket: yellow button, green button, green button again at the payment prompt, then display it.
• Tenterden Leisure Centre customers can activate a free 2.5 hour session at a machine beyond reception, by entering the registration.

Coaches park free for up to three hours at Tenterden Station Road, east side only, and still need a free pay and display ticket to prove it.

Where parking is genuinely free, and the traps

The council’s free parking page lists four Ashford car parks and one in Tenterden. Its reason is that these are the sites and times that are “currently underutilised”.

Off-street, free means:

• Elwick Place, free after 3pm every day
• Flour Mills, free on Sundays and bank holidays
• Elwick Road, free on Sundays
• Station Road, free after 3pm on Sundays and bank holidays
• Bridewell Lane, Tenterden, free on Sundays and bank holidays

Now the traps.

Elwick Road’s own car park page does not mention the Sunday exemption. It lists the charging period as 8am to 6pm with no exception, while the free parking page says Sundays are free there. The two council pages disagree, and only one of them is the page you land on if you search for the car park by name.

Tenterden’s biggest car park charges when the small one does not. Recreation Ground Road has 209 bays and charges every day of the year, at £13.20 beyond four hours. Bridewell Lane, a few minutes away with 125 bays, is free on Sundays and bank holidays and charges £6.00 beyond four hours the rest of the time. A Sunday visitor who parks by instinct at the larger one pays for a day that would have cost nothing.

Vicarage Lane and Dover Place cost the same for an hour and different for a day. Both are £1.30 an hour. Stay five hours and Vicarage Lane is £13.20 while Dover Place is £6.00.

The Civic Centre changes price by the day of the week. Over four hours it is £13.20 Monday to Friday and £6.00 on Saturday and Sunday.

On-street parking, and the Bank Street barrier

Charged on-street bays are on Apsley Street, East Street, Queen Street, Church Road, Godinton Road, Regents Place, Drum Lane, Norwood Street and West Street. The rules there are (on-street parking in Ashford):

• charges apply from 8am to 10pm
• between 9am and 6pm there is a maximum stay of one hour, at £1.30 an hour
• between 6pm and 10pm it is £1.30 an hour, or a flat £3.60 for more than an hour
• the minimum stay is 30 minutes
• blue badge holders park free in any of these bays

Separately, the marked bays inside the town centre pedestrian zone are free in the evenings. High Street, North Street and Bank Street are free after 6pm Monday to Saturday and free all day Sunday. New Street is free after 4.30pm on any day.

The thing to know about the pedestrian zone is the barrier on Bank Street, at the junction with Tufton Street. It is manned, and once it is closed almost nothing gets through. It is down:

• Monday to Friday, 10.30am to 5pm
• Saturday, 8am to 6pm
• Sunday, not restricted

Blue badge holders are not let through the barrier once it is closed. The council states that in terms, and it is the single most useful sentence on its parking pages for anyone driving a disabled passenger into the centre.

Blue badge parking

Off-street, a valid blue badge gives three hours free in any council car park, with the badge and a time clock set to the arrival time on display. If no disabled bay is free you can use a standard bay and still get the three hours. Stay longer and you pay for the whole stay, not just the excess.

Elwick Place is different because it reads number plates rather than windscreens. To get the three hours there you have to register the badge with the council’s ANPR system, upload a copy of it, and name the vehicles it is used in. The registration has to be renewed each year. If you use a marked disabled bay in Elwick Place you must also display the badge (disabled parking).

Blue badges are issued by Kent County Council, not the borough. Shopmobility Ashford hires out wheelchairs and scooters from Level 1 of the Blue car park at County Square.

Permits, season tickets and vouchers

Ashford runs on-street resident permit zones lettered A, B, C, D, E, F, G, X, Y and Z, with separate terms for each, plus visitor permits. Permits are electronic, and an application needs a V5 or equivalent showing the registration and address, plus proof of residence (residential parking permits). The council does not publish the permit prices on that page; they sit inside the terms and conditions document for each zone, so this page does not quote them.

Season ticket prices it does publish (season tickets and car park vouchers):

The town centre ticket covers Station Road, Elwick Road, Dover Place, Victoria Road and Flour Mills. The Tenterden ticket covers Bridewell Lane and the rear section of the leisure centre car park. There is also an Elwick Road business permit at £594 a year.

If you park two or three times a week rather than daily, vouchers are cheaper than a season ticket: books of ten, valid a year, at £37.50 for the inner car parks (Elwick Road, Dover Place, Station Road, Bridewell Lane and behind Tenterden Leisure Centre) and £32.50 for the outer ones (Flour Mills and Victoria Road).

Parking at Ashford International

The station car parks are not run by the council. Car Park A is the closest and the dearest, Car Park F on Elwick Road is the cheaper alternative, and both are APCOA sites.

Daily rates at both expire at 4am, not midnight. Blue badge holders park free at both (Car Park A, Car Park F).

Walking round to Car Park F instead saves £3.80 on a midweek day, and £384 a year on an annual ticket.

Also on The Ashford Times

• Ashford roadworks and travel, the closures that change where you can park
• Ashford bin collection days
• Ashford council tax bands