Six council car parks charge £6.60 all day, five charge £11.20. Weekends cost £3 flat, three car parks bite after 3 hours, and April's overcharge is refundable.
An all-day stay in a Northampton council car park costs either £6.60 or £11.20, depending on which one you pick, and the two are a few minutes’ walk apart. Three more will charge you £23 or £32 for a long day without ever printing the words “all day” on the tariff board.
This page sets out what the council’s town centre car parks charge, where the traps are, what is genuinely free, and how to claim the refund the council still owes some drivers from April. All figures were taken from West Northamptonshire Council’s own pages on 2 September 2026.
What a full weekday costs
The council’s car park tariffs fall into three tiers on a Monday to Friday.
| Car park | Spaces | All day, Mon to Fri | Sat, Sun and bank holidays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abington Place | 26 | £6.60 | £3 |
| Doddridge Street | 71 | £6.60 | £3 |
| Marefair | 83 | £6.60 | £3 |
| Market Street | 44 | £6.60 | £3 |
| Melbourne Street | 16 | £6.60 | £3 |
| St Michael’s multi-storey | 464 | £6.60 | £3 |
| Commercial Street | 250 | £8.80 | £3 |
| Grosvenor multi-storey | 810 | £8.80 | £3 |
| Newlands | 59 | £8.80 | £3 |
| Albion Place | 71 | £11.20 | £3 |
| Campbell Square | 28 | £11.20 | £3 |
| Midsummer Meadow | 126 | £11.20 | £3 |
| St John’s multi-storey | 485 | £11.20 | £3 |
| Upper Mounts | 310 | £11.20 | £3 |
The useful comparison is between the multi-storeys. St Michael’s is £6.60 all day. Grosvenor is £8.80. St John’s is £11.20 for the same stay. All three sit inside the ring road, within a few hundred metres of each other.
The Mayorhold multi-storey, at 1,073 spaces the largest in the town, shut on 20 July and will not reopen: the council confirmed on 2 October that it is closed permanently (our report). Upper Mounts and Newlands have also lost spaces to archaeological work. We covered that in a third of town centre spaces going out from 1 September.
The three car parks that punish a long stay
Commercial Street South, The Ridings and Wellington Street carry a premium rate. Short stays look ordinary. Then the tariff steps sharply.
Commercial Street South (42 spaces) charges the premium after three hours:
| Stay | Charge |
|---|---|
| Up to 3 hours | £3.30 |
| Up to 4 hours | £8.30 |
| Up to 5 hours | £13.30 |
| Up to 6 hours | £18.30 |
| Up to 7 hours | £23.30 |
The Ridings (55 spaces) charges the premium after five hours:
| Stay | Charge |
|---|---|
| Up to 5 hours | £7 |
| Up to 6 hours | £13.40 |
| Up to 7 hours | £19.80 |
| Up to 8 hours | £26.20 |
| Up to 9 hours | £32.60 |
Wellington Street (37 spaces) also steps up after five hours, at £7 for five hours, £13.40 for six and £19.80 for seven.
The weekend does not spare you at two of them. The Ridings runs the same premium ladder on a Saturday, Sunday or bank holiday: £3 up to five hours, then £13.40 at six and £32.60 at nine. Wellington Street charges £3 up to five hours, then £6.40 for every extra hour. Both list an overstay charge of £5 or £6.40 an hour.
If you are staying past three hours, one of the flat-rate car parks in the table above will cost you a fraction of this.
Weekends, evenings and bank holidays
Saturdays, Sundays and public bank holidays are £3 for any stay between midnight and 6pm in the ordinary car parks. Christmas Day is free everywhere.
Evenings run from 6pm to midnight at £2.20 in the cheaper car parks and £2.80 in the dearer ones, and the ticket lasts until 10am the next morning. If you park before 6pm and stay later, you pay the daytime tariff up to 6pm plus the evening charge on top.
Three inconsistencies on the council’s own page are worth knowing about before you argue with a warden:
- Albion Place lists the £3 Saturday, Sunday and bank holiday charge, then adds a separate line saying “Bank Holidays: Free.”
- Campbell Square gives its evening charge as £2.80 in one line and £2.20 in the next.
- St John’s says weekday charges run “up to 6pm” but sets its evening window as “from 5pm to 11:59pm”.
The tariff board on site is what the council enforces against, so read it.
What is actually free
- Blue Badge holders park free in every council car park in Northampton, and the council confirmed on 1 July it will not introduce a charge.
- Motorcycles park free in every council car park.
- Country parks and open spaces stay free: Hunsbury Hill Country Park, West Hunsbury Country Park (Ladybridge), the Racecourse, Radlands Skate Park and the Bedford Road picnic area.
- Christmas Day is free in every council car park.
The council confirmed all of this on 1 July 2026 after a second consultation drew more than 660 responses. An earlier round in February drew over 3,000, and led to free parking being kept in Daventry, Brackley and Towcester. It was not kept in Northampton.
The April refund you may still be owed
On 1 April 2026 the council raised off-street charges before it had carried out the statutory consultation. That was unlawful, and it has apologised. Refunds are still open.
Who is owed money, according to the council’s refund page:
- Blue Badge holders charged to park in April get a full refund
- anyone who paid a bank holiday charge in a Northampton town centre car park in April gets a full refund
- anyone who paid the increased weekend rate gets the difference between £2.20 and £3
- anyone who paid at Albion Place, Campbell Square, Midsummer Meadow, St John’s or Upper Mounts gets the difference between the old and new charges
- resident permit and season ticket buyers are being contacted directly
If you paid by card or through PayByPhone, and it was not a Blue Badge charge, the refund is automatic and you need do nothing. If you paid cash, or you are a Blue Badge holder, you must claim it using the council’s online refund form.
Penalty charge notices issued in a council car park in Northampton between 1 and 24 April 2026 have been cancelled. Paid ones are refunded automatically if you paid online or by phone; cheque and postal order payments need an email to the parking enforcement team.
One caveat. The council’s parking landing page says refunds cover the period “up to 24 April 2026”, while its own refund page says they cover “the whole of April 2026”. If you paid in the last week of April, claim anyway and cite the refund page.
On-street parking
On-street charges were not affected by the April error, and were implemented correctly. Since 17 August 2026 the town centre has two on-street tariffs, set by the council’s notice of variation N/392:
| Stay | Premium streets | Standard central streets |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 30 minutes | £1 | £0.80 |
| Up to 1 hour | £2 | £1.60 |
| Up to 2 hours | £4 | £3.20 |
The premium streets are Abington Street, George Row, Mercers Row and St Giles Street. Their machines have been painted red; standard machines stay black. Everywhere else in the central zone kept the old price, including Sheep Street, Guildhall Road, Fetter Street, Derngate, Hazelwood Road, Bridge Street, Church Lane, Regent Square, Spencer Parade, Newlands, Albion Place and Castilian Street. We covered the change in four streets up 25% from Monday.
For longer stays the notice leaves three options untouched:
- £4.80 for four hours on St John’s Street, Court Road and Derngate machine 13
- £10 for 24 hours on Cliftonville
- £8 all day on The Avenue
Permits
On-street permits are unchanged by the August variation:
| Permit | Cost |
|---|---|
| Resident, annual | £45 |
| Resident, six months or less | £22.50 |
| Visitor, annual | £45 |
| Carer or healthcare worker, annual | £45 |
| Business, annual | £450 |
| Waiver, day 1 | £17.50 |
| Waiver, each further consecutive day | £11 |
| Waiver, weekly | £55 |
Off-street permits are a different story, and this is the thing the council does not advertise. It has stopped accepting new applications for resident parking permits in its Northampton town centre car parks. Existing holders can renew, but any break in cover turns the next application into a season ticket.
The gap between the two is large:
| Car park | Existing resident, per month | Season ticket, per month |
|---|---|---|
| Abington Place, Commercial Street, Marefair, Market Street, Melbourne Street, Newlands, St Michael’s | £33.60 | £132 |
| Albion Place, Campbell Square, Midsummer Meadow, St John’s, Upper Mounts | £42.70 | £167.60 |
A new resident therefore pays roughly four times what a neighbour who has held a permit continuously pays for the same space. Permits are all virtual now, take up to three working days to process, and you pay normal charges in the meantime.
Bulk buyers get a discount: 15 per cent on 10 to 19 permits, 20 per cent on 20 to 49, 25 per cent on 50 to 99 and 30 per cent on 100 to 199.
Parking at the station, and the cheaper way to do it
Northampton station’s car park is run by Saba for London Northwestern Railway, not by the council. Its published tariffs are:
| Ticket | Cost |
|---|---|
| Daily, arriving before 10am | £12.80 |
| Daily, arriving after 10am | £8.90 |
| Saturday, Sunday and bank holidays | £9 |
| Weekend, Friday afternoon to Monday morning | £17.90 |
| Weekly | £49.70 |
| Monthly | £154.70 |
| Quarterly | £355.90 |
| Annual | £1,118.50 |
Blue Badge parking is free there too.
For commuters, the council undercuts it heavily. It sells a commuter permit at £70 a month at Commercial Street and Marefair, both a short walk from the station, to anyone holding a valid rail season ticket. That is £84.70 a month less than the station’s own monthly ticket. You must produce rail photo ID and a season ticket valid for at least two-thirds of the permit period, and the council will not accept a receipt after the fact.
Blue Badge bays and penalties
The largest allocations of disabled bays are at Grosvenor multi-storey (32), Upper Mounts (6), St John’s multi-storey (11), Albion Place (9) and St Michael’s multi-storey (8). If someone in your household holds a Blue Badge, you can apply for a disabled bay outside your home.
A bus lane or moving traffic penalty is £70, halved to £35 if you pay within 21 days. The council also warns that it never issues penalty notices by text message. A genuine parking penalty is left on the vehicle; bus lane and moving traffic penalties arrive by post with photographic evidence.
Also on The Northampton Wire
- Roadworks and travel in Northampton, tracking closures from the council’s live register
- Northampton bin collection days, including the move to three-weekly black bins
- Northampton council tax bands, with the full A to H table for every parish in the town
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