Every council car park tariff from the April 2026 schedule, the free bays the council never lists, and the Sunday evening charge on Foregate Street.

Chester’s parking prices are published in two places that do not agree, and the one most people find is the out-of-date one. The figures below come from the council’s own fees and charges schedule as at 1 April 2026, the statutory list of what Cheshire West and Chester actually charges this financial year, cross-checked against each car park’s page.

The discrepancy worth knowing first

The council’s Chester car parks pages list a first hour at New Market Parking of £4 and at Delamere Street of £4. The April 2026 fees schedule prices both at £4.50, and New Market’s second hour at £6 rather than the £5.50 the web page shows. The schedule is the current document. Take the machine’s price as final, but budget for the higher figure.

The same schedule gives Delamere Street’s opening hours as 6.30am to 9pm with vehicles still able to exit later, where the web page says 11.30pm. If you are leaving a car late, that is the one to check on the signs before you walk away.

Council car parks in Chester

Prices below are per stay, on arrival before 6pm unless stated.

Car park Spaces Up to 1 hour 1 to 2 hours 2 to 4 hours 4 to 6 hours Over 6 hours After 6pm
New Market, Hunter Street 800 £4.50 £6.00 £7.50 £9.50 £11.00 £4.50
Delamere Street 351 £4.50 £5.50 £7.00 £9.00 £10.50 see signs
Trinity Street 145 £4.00 £5.50 £7.00 £9.00 £10.50 £2.50
Garden Lane 120 £2.00 £3.00 £4.00 £5.00 over 4 hours £5.00 £2.00
Brook Street 137 £2.00 £3.00 £4.00 £5.00 not listed £2.00
Bishop Street, Hoole 82 £1.00 up to 2 hours £1.00 £1.50, 4 hour max not listed not listed £1.00

Three more are priced differently. Little Roodee, 452 spaces on the bank of the Dee, is £6.50 for up to 12 hours and £9.50 beyond that, £2 after 6pm, and takes coaches and motorhomes at £7 for three hours, £9.50 for six and £11.50 beyond, or £5.50 after 5pm. Watergate Street and New Crane Street, 128 spaces, is a flat £6.50 all day and £2 after 6pm. 33 and 37 Christleton Road is 50p for two hours or £3.50 for four, Monday to Saturday on arrivals up to 5pm, and free after that.

New Market Parking is the multi-storey on Hunter Street that replaced the old Market car park, 800 spaces, open 6.30am to 1.30am with a two metre height limit, and it has a secure cycle hub with room for 50 bikes and free e-bike charging, opened by a one-off £10 access card bought from the car park office.

Where you can park free in Chester

The council does not gather these anywhere, so here they are.

  • Sandy Lane, 36 spaces, free up to a maximum of four hours.
  • Curzon Street, Saltney, 12 spaces, free at all times.
  • Hamilton Place, nine spaces, all of them disabled bays, free for up to four hours.
  • Walker Street, Hoole, 11 spaces, free from 6pm to 8am; between 8am and 6pm it is permit and blue badge holders only.
  • 33 and 37 Christleton Road, free after 5pm Monday to Saturday and free all day Sunday.

Outside the city the free list is longer: Baron’s Quay in Northwich is free with a four hour maximum stay across 900 spaces, all six Winsford car parks are free, and so are Malpas High Street, both Tarporley car parks, Weaverham Church Street, Cuddington, and every council car park in Neston, Parkgate, Great Sutton and Little Sutton. In Ellesmere Port the Whitby Road, Whitby Park and Hall and Wellington Road North car parks are free, the last of those with 274 spaces and 7am to 7pm opening.

The trap: evening and Sunday charges on the street

Chester’s on-street bays are where drivers get caught, because the charging hours are not the ones you expect.

Foregate Street charges £1.50 an hour from 8am to 6pm Monday to Sunday, with a one hour maximum and no return within an hour, and then charges again £1.50 from 6pm to 9pm, also Monday to Sunday. Brook Street charges £1.50 from 6pm to 9pm every day of the week. City Road charges £1.50 an hour from 8am to 6pm Monday to Saturday, from 2pm to 6pm on Sunday, and £1.50 from 6pm to 9pm every day, with a two hour maximum.

So a Sunday evening in the city centre is chargeable on all three, and a Sunday afternoon is chargeable on two of them. Free-after-six is not the rule here.

Blue badges, and the microchip almost nobody has

Blue badge holders can park on yellow lines for up to three hours and in designated bays without a time limit, subject to the signs. In council pay and display car parks they get four hours free, and three car parks are dedicated to badge holders: Frodsham Street in Chester (93 spaces, 63 of them disabled bays), Hamilton Place in Chester, and Central Palace Drive in Northwich.

The pay on exit car parks are the catch. Free parking there requires a microchip sticker for the badge, available only to Cheshire West residents and applied for separately, and it expires with the badge, so renewing the badge means reapplying for the chip. Even with the chip, the four hours free applies in every pay-on-exit car park except Delamere Street. New Market Parking does honour it, as its entry in the fees schedule confirms.

A replacement or renewal blue badge carries a £10 administration fee.

Permits

A Chester residents’ parking permit is £80 a year for a first or second priority permit and £110 for a third priority permit, issued for one year from the first day of the month the application is accepted. Priority one is a household in the zone with no permit; priority two is a second permit or a household with inadequate off-street parking; priority three is a household outside the zone. Replacements are £10. Ellesmere Port residents’ permits are free.

There is no automatic entitlement, and availability differs sharply by zone. On the council’s own listing, Zone E (Stanley Place) shows permits available, Zones A and D show limited availability, and Zones B, C, F and G show no availability, meaning a waiting list. If you are buying or renting inside the walls, that is worth checking before you commit.

Visitor permits in Chester, Frodsham and Northwich come as up to ten all-day permits at £1.50 each and twenty two-hour permits at 50p each, held in an online account and activated on the day. Ellesmere Port instead offers up to three annual permits for named vehicles plus 50 day permits.

Dispensation permits for commercial vehicles needing city centre access are £30 a day, or £10 a day for residents living inside a residents’ parking zone.

Fines

A penalty charge notice is £70 at the higher level and £50 at the lower, halved to £35 and £25 if paid within 14 days. Leave it and the debt is registered with the Traffic Enforcement Centre after 14 days, taking it to £115 and £85, with bailiff costs on top once a warrant is issued.

Two warnings from the council itself. It does not use QR codes on any parking payment machine, so a QR sticker on a machine is a scam and should be reported. And cashless payment is available through RingGo, JustPark, PayByPhone and APCOA connect, each of which adds a small transaction charge on top of the tariff.

Park and ride is the cheap way in

Parking at the three park and ride sites costs nothing; you pay for the bus. An adult day ticket is £2.50, a young person’s day ticket (5 to 18) is £1, a group ticket for up to five people is £5, and a Multi 6 ticket bought in the Stagecoach app is £12.50 for six days.

  • PR1 Wrexham Road, 1,200 spaces, every 20 minutes, first bus 7am and last bus 6.40pm on weekdays.
  • PR2 Boughton Heath, 750 spaces, every 15 minutes on weekdays, first bus 7am and last bus 6.30pm.
  • PR3 Upton (Zoo), 460 spaces, every 15 minutes in the morning peak then every 20, last bus 6.45pm. Its Countess ticket, £1.50, covers travel between Upton and Liverpool Road for the hospital.

The Sealand Road park and ride service is suspended until further notice. None of the three runs on Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Year’s Day, and none has electric charging yet.

Station parking

Chester station has 252 parking spaces including seven accessible spaces. It is not a council car park and its tariff is set by the station operator, so check on the day rather than trusting a figure from anywhere else.

The council does run three commuter car parks on the line. Hooton Road, next to Hooton station, is 437 spaces at a flat £1.30 all day, which is the cheapest park-and-train option in the borough. Church Street in Frodsham, by Frodsham station, is 86 spaces at 50p for two hours, 80p for four, £1.30 for six and £1.80 beyond. Station Avenue in Helsby is 21 spaces at 50p for two hours, £1 for four, £1.50 for six and £2 beyond.

A tip for Fountains Health Centre patients

Delamere Street car park sits next to Fountains Health Centre, and patients can park for up to two hours for £1.50 Monday to Friday by presenting the parking ticket at reception to be validated. Against a £5.50 two hour tariff, that is £4 back for asking.