Chichester's car parks charge on Sundays, 10am to 5pm, and at full weekday rates on bank holidays. Long stay is £2.30 for two hours. Two are free all day.

Two things about Chichester District Council’s car parks catch people out, and both are buried in a column heading on the council’s own page.

Sunday is not free. Every charged car park in the city runs 10am to 5pm on Sundays. Bank holidays are not free either. The council’s tariff table heads its weekday column “Mon - Sat charging times including bank and public holidays”. So Monday 31 August is a full-price Monday.

The free hour people talk about is real, but it is not in Chichester. It is in Midhurst, Petworth, Selsey and East Wittering, and you still have to get a ticket for it.

All figures below are the council’s 2026-27 charges, effective 1 April 2026, from its car parks page and its approved Fees and Charges 2026-27. Checked on 26 August 2026.

Chichester city tariffs

There are three tariffs, and the gap between them is large. Four hours costs £4.60 in a long stay car park and £10.00 in Little London.

Time Long stay Short stay Short stay (central)
30 mins 70p 70p n/a
1 hour £1.10 £1.80 £2.50
2 hours £2.30 £3.70 £5.00
3 hours £3.50 £5.80 £7.40
4 hours £4.60 £7.70 £10.00
5 hours £5.70 £9.80 £12.30
6 hours £6.40 £11.60 £14.80
8 hours £7.80 £15.20 £17.30
10 hours £8.90 £18.00 £19.80
12 hours £10.00 £19.60 £21.20

Which car park is which:

  • Long stay: Northgate (907 spaces), Avenue de Chartres (890), Cattle Market (836), Basin Road (115). Only Northgate sells a 12 hour ticket; the other three stop at 10 hours.
  • Short stay (central), the dearest: Little London (81 spaces) and Baffins Lane (86).
  • Short stay: East Pallant (165), New Park Road (95), Market Avenue (75), South Pallant (52), St Cyriacs (50), Market Road (50), Orchard Street (64 across two parts), Cawley Priory (81), St John’s (29).

Charging hours are 8am to 8pm Monday to Saturday at the short stay car parks and at Northgate, and 8am to 6pm at Avenue de Chartres, Basin Road and Cattle Market. Sunday is 10am to 5pm everywhere. All car parks stay open 24 hours; it is only the charging that stops.

Market Road and the northern part of Orchard Street are season ticket only from Monday to Friday, and revert to pay and display at weekends and on bank holidays.

Avenue de Chartres has a 1.93 metre height barrier and Cattle Market 2.3 metres, which rules both out for a roof box or a high-top van.

You can pay by cash, card or the MiPermit app. Each car park has a six-digit MiPermit location code on the tariff board; Northgate is 711015, Cattle Market 711014, Avenue de Chartres 711012.

Where parking is actually free

Two council car parks in the city charge nothing at any time:

  • Florence Road, PO19 7PY. 20 spaces, one disabled bay. Maximum stay three hours, and no return within three hours.
  • Freeland Close, PO19 3SA. Two electric vehicle bays and a disabled bay, no time limit published.

Two more in the district are free all day:

  • Crossfield, Fernhurst, GU27 3JL. 57 spaces.
  • Sylvia Beaufoy, Petworth, GU28 0ET. 72 spaces and two disabled bays, free at all times, while Pound Street a few streets away charges.

Blue Badge holders park free in any council car park bay. More on that below.

The free hour trap in the market towns

Several rural and coastal car parks give you a free period. Grange Road in Midhurst gives two hours. Midhurst North Street and Post Office, Pound Street in Petworth, East Street in Selsey and Northern Crescent in East Wittering each give one hour.

The council prints one line above that table, and it is the whole catch:

For ‘Free period’ durations, a pay & display ticket must be obtained from the payment machines and displayed in your vehicle, failure to this may attract a Penalty Charge Notice.

A free hour still needs a ticket. Walking straight off is how people collect a PCN in a car park that costs nothing.

After the free period, those four town car parks all charge the same: £1.00 for two hours, £1.30 for three, £1.50 for four, £2.10 for five, £2.40 for six, £2.70 for eight and £3.50 for ten. Grange Road starts at three hours because its first two are free.

The coast: seven days a week, all year

The beach car parks do not take Sunday off and they do not take bank holidays off. Their tariff boards say “seasonal charges apply all year (incl. Bank & Public holidays)”, and charging runs Monday to Sunday, 8am to 6pm.

Bracklesham Lane, Bracklesham Bay (97 spaces) and Marine Drive, West Wittering (65 marked bays plus about 150 on grass):

Time 1 April to 31 October 1 November to 31 March
2 hours £2.90 £1.00
4 hours £5.50 n/a
10 hours £7.00 £2.50

East Beach and Selsey Marine, Selsey, from 1 April to 31 October: 80p for an hour, £2.30 for ten hours. Both are unmarked surfaces, roughly 181 and 50 spaces, with a 2.1 metre height limit.

Bosham Lane, Bosham (379 spaces) is the odd one out, and the only council car park priced by the day: £1.10 for an hour, £2.30 for two, £3.40 for three, £4.50 for four, £5.10 for six, then £5.70 for 24 hours, £8.20 for 48 hours, £4.10 for each further 24 hours and £28.40 for a week. Coaches are £8.50 a day.

One caution. The council’s own rural tariff table on the car parks page is broken: the “up to 4 hours” row carries eleven prices against twelve car park columns, so reading straight down that row will give you the wrong car park’s price. The figures above come from the approved fees schedule instead, which lists each car park separately.

On-street parking in the city

There are 29 solar-powered pay and display machines around the city centre and they sell a maximum of one hour. The rate is £1.05 for 30 minutes and £2.10 for an hour.

West Sussex County Council is the highway authority for on-street parking. It has confirmed that on-street permit prices go up on 1 October 2026, and the district council has put a notice to that effect at the top of every one of its permit pages.

Resident permits

Chichester has 13 Controlled Parking Zones: A, E, F, G, H, H2, J, K, L, M, N, O and S. All permits are now digital, issued through MiPermit, with nothing to display. The council stopped selling them over the counter at East Pallant House.

Annual costs, before the October increase:

Zone Hours enforced First permit Additional permit
F, G, H, K, L, O 09:00 to 17:00 £63 £126
J, M, S 09:00 to 21:00 £63 £126
A (part day) 09:00 to 10:00 and 13:00 to 14:00 £49 £98
H2, N (part day) 10:00 to 11:00 and 14:00 to 15:00 £49 £98
E, city centre 09:00 to 17:30 £209 £260

Six month permits are roughly half. Low emission vehicles get about 25% off: £48 for a first permit in the standard zones, £157 in zone E. Prices are from the council’s resident permits page.

Note what the table does: the second permit at an address costs twice the first, in every zone except the city centre. A two-car household in zone G pays £189 a year, not £126.

Resident visitor permits are available in every zone except E, the city centre. Allow 72 hours for authorisation. In the two-hour zones A, H2 and N, one permit covers both the morning and the afternoon restriction. Refunds are only given on complete unused bundles and only above £10.

Blue Badge parking

Three different rules apply, and they are more generous than most districts:

  • Council car parks. Most have marked disabled bays. If those are full, a badge holder may use any other pay and display bay free of charge, as long as the badge is displayed and the registered holder is driving or is a passenger.
  • On-street pay and display bays. No time limit and no payment.
  • Yellow lines. Up to three hours with the clock displayed, except where there is a loading restriction, where you cannot park at all.

Badges themselves are issued by West Sussex County Council, not the district. The district’s civil enforcement officers can and do retain badges they believe are being misused, under the Disabled Persons’ Parking Badges Act 2013. If yours is taken, the district council cannot help; you have to go to the county’s Blue Badge team.

Season tickets

Season tickets are monthly, digital and bought through MiPermit. Prices below reflect the 1 April 2026 increase.

Ticket Where it is valid Per month
X Roving Basin Road, part of Cattle Market, part of Northgate £71
X Roving part-time Same three car parks £44
Avenue de Chartres Avenue de Chartres £60
Market Road (A) Market Road, Mon to Fri £111
Orchard Street (D) Orchard Street north section, Mon to Fri £111
Rural and coastal Midhurst, Petworth or Selsey car parks £26
Bosham Bosham Lane £28

Buying six months of the X Roving ticket costs £404.70 rather than £426, a saving of £21.30. The X Roving zones are partial, not whole car parks: at Northgate it is only the area on the Festival Theatre side of the access road, and at Cattle Market only the area south of the east-west roadways.

Some zones and car parks have waiting lists, so a permit is not always available on demand.

Chichester station

The station car park is run by APCOA, not the council, and prices are separate:

  • Monday to Friday, all day: £7.50
  • Evening from 5pm, Monday to Friday: £3.90
  • Saturday and Sunday, all day: £7.20
  • Weekly: £28.90. Monthly: £114.90. Quarterly: £321.00

APCOA lists 167 spaces at Southgate, PO19 8DL, with nine electric charging bays, three motorbike spaces and a 2.00 metre height limit.

Worth comparing before you assume the council is cheaper. A full day in a council long stay car park is £7.80 for eight hours and £8.90 for ten. The station’s all-day weekday ticket is £7.50 and covers as long as you need, so for a day in London the station car park undercuts Northgate and Cattle Market.

Parking tickets

A Penalty Charge Notice is discounted to £25 or £35 if you pay within 14 days of the date it was served, depending on the contravention. Chichester PCNs begin with ZK or ZA.

The council warns that it will never text you asking for payment. Any SMS demanding money for a Chichester PCN is a scam, and should be forwarded to 7726.

Challenges go through three stages: an informal challenge, then formal representations, then an appeal to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal. The council asks for all of it in writing, because everything has to be reproduced if the case reaches an adjudicator.

Also on Chichester Live