Northgate End is £4.40 all day, Apton Road and Basbow Lane £8.10. Every council tariff, the free 30 minutes, Sunday rates, permits and the station car park.
An all-day stay in Bishop’s Stortford costs £4.40 at Northgate End and £8.10 at Apton Road or Basbow Lane. Same town, same day, nearly double the price. That gap is deliberate. When tariffs rose across the district in April 2025, East Herts held Northgate End’s prices flat “to encourage better use of this facility”, and the multi-storey is still the cheapest long stay in the town by a wide margin.
Below are the current tariffs for all eight council car parks and their separately priced zones, the free periods and the traps in them, and what changed on 6 April 2026.
Every council car park, and what it costs
| Car park | Spaces | Stay | 1 hour | All day | Sunday and bank holidays |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northgate End | 482 | Long and short | £1.05 | £4.40 | £1.70 all day |
| Grange Paddocks A | 80 | Long and short | £2.10 for 2.5 hours | £3.60 | £2.10 all day |
| Grange Paddocks B | 150 | Short | Free for 2.5 hours | £3.60 for 5 hours | £2.10 all day |
| Elm Road | 47 | Long | £4.20 for 5 hours | £5.20 | £2.10 all day |
| Crown Terrace B | 48 | Long | £6.20 for 5 hours | £7.50 | £2.10 all day |
| Apton Road | 86 | Long and short | £1.25 | £8.10 | £2.10 all day |
| Basbow Lane | 71 | Long and short | £1.25 | £8.10 | £2.00 all day |
| Crown Terrace A | 17 | Short, 3 hours max | £1.25 | Not available | £2.10 all day |
| Link Road | 100 | Short, 5 hours max | £1.25 | Not available | £2.10 all day |
| Jackson Square | 708 | Short, 5 hours max | £1.25 | Not available | £2.10 all day |
Source: East Herts District Council, the individual car park pages under Details of our car parks.
Chargeable hours are 07.30 to 20.00 Monday to Saturday at most sites. Crown Terrace B and both Grange Paddocks zones start at 08.30 and 09.00 respectively. Jackson Square stops charging at 18.30, which makes it the free option for an evening at the cinema or a restaurant.
Every council car park in the town is free on Christmas Day.
The free half hour, and where it does not exist
Five of the car parks give you 30 minutes free, but only if you go to the machine and take a ticket. No ticket means a penalty charge, even inside the free period.
Free 30 minutes applies at Apton Road, Basbow Lane, Crown Terrace A, Crown Terrace B and Elm Road. It does not apply at Jackson Square, Link Road or Northgate End, where the meter starts at minute one. Northgate End’s page states it plainly: “There are no FREE parking bays.”
Grange Paddocks B is the outlier and the best free deal in the town: 2.5 hours free, seven days a week, again on a ticket. It closes when the leisure centre does, which is 6pm on a Saturday and Sunday.
One caution on Grange Paddocks. The council said in January that operational hours at zones B and C would be extended to 8pm from 6 April 2026, but the car park page still shows charging from 09.00 to 17.00 in zone B. Read the tariff board.
Sundays and bank holidays
Every council car park in Bishop’s Stortford charges a flat all-day rate on Sundays and bank holidays, currently £2.10 at most sites, £2.00 at Basbow Lane and £1.70 at Northgate End.
That flat rate is a deliberate design. The council introduced it in 2023 at £1.50 “to encourage longer stays to support the local economy, whilst deterring short stays”. There is no cheaper short option on a Sunday, so a 20-minute errand costs the same as a full day.
What changed on 6 April 2026
The Executive approved a package of changes on 13 January 2026, after a consultation the previous October.
- Tariffs in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertford and Ware rose in line with the Consumer Price Index
- Blue badge holders were capped at three hours free, where the concession had been open-ended. Holders can now stay longer by paying for the extra time
- Grange Paddocks A gained a 2.5-hour charge, and Grange Paddocks B and C had their operational hours extended to 8pm
- Several under-used disabled bays at Northgate End were converted to parent and child bays
- Administrative corrections were made at Link Road and Jackson Square, covering car club bays and operational hours
Source: East Herts District Council, Parking Changes Coming to East Herts Car Parks, 14 January 2026. The council’s own Car Parking Tariff Changes page has not been updated to cover any of this. Its most recent entry is April 2025.
Paying: any app you already have
East Herts joined the National Parking Platform on 14 January 2026, alongside Welwyn Hatfield and Stevenage. In practice that means you no longer have to download the council’s chosen app.
RingGo, JustPark, APCOA Connect, AppyParking, Caura and PayByPhone all work in every East Herts car park. Enter the location number shown on the tariff board. The numbers for the main sites are Jackson Square 5392460, Northgate End 5392462, Link Road 5392463, Apton Road 5392464, Elm Road 5392465, Basbow Lane 5392466 and Grange Paddocks A and B 5392468 and 5392469.
Machines take cash, card, Apple Pay and Google Pay, but not American Express or Diners Club. One exception matters: Crown Terrace has no pay-by-phone service at all. Take cash or a card.
Northgate End: the multi-storey, and its rules
Northgate End is the town’s newest car park and its cheapest long stay, but it comes with more conditions than the rest.
- 482 bays across four levels, 2.1 metre height limit, two lifts
- Vehicle access 07.00 to 23.00 only. You cannot drive in overnight, though the exit is open 24 hours
- The top deck closes at 23.00 and reopens at 07.00
- 54 electric vehicle charging bays with PodPoint chargers, three of them disabled bays
- Charging costs £0.44 per kWh, paid through the PodPoint app, and the parking session is separate. You pay twice
- Five-hour maximum in an EV bay, whether or not you are still charging
If you plug in and do not confirm the session in the PodPoint app, charging stops after 15 minutes.
Jackson Square: free evenings and a shopper refund
Jackson Square is the big one, 708 spaces over a multi-storey with a 2.1 metre height limit. It is short stay only, five hours maximum.
Two things are worth knowing. Charging stops at 18.30, earlier than anywhere else in town, so evenings are free. And Sainsbury’s refunds up to two hours of parking on the first floor against a pay and display voucher, Monday to Saturday, subject to a minimum spend.
The car park is locked from 1am to 6am every day.
Market traders
Two car parks run a discounted trader rate. Apton Road is £4.80 on Thursdays and Saturdays. Link Road is £5.00, Thursday to Saturday.
Blue badge parking
The concession changed in April 2026 and is now time-limited.
- Three hours free in any council pay and display car park
- Three hours on single or double yellow lines, with the clock displayed
- As long as you need in limited waiting bays
- As long as you need in on-street disabled bays in town centre areas, unless the sign plate says otherwise
Set the time clock to your arrival time in every case. At Northgate End, a blue badge holder in an EV bay parks free but still has to pay to charge, and the five-hour cap still applies.
Source: East Herts District Council, Disabled Badge Users.
Resident permits
Bishop’s Stortford has permit zones B1 to B8, covering roads including Stansted Road, Dunmow Road, Windhill, Apton Road, Newtown Road, Nursery Road and the Chantry area. The full street-by-street list is on the council’s Bishop’s Stortford resident parking schemes page.
| Permit | Annual cost |
|---|---|
| First permit | £75 |
| Second permit | £150 |
| Third permit, where available | £150 |
Third permits exist in only a handful of zones: B1 on Stansted Road, B2 on Dunmow Road, B3 on Windhill and B7 in the Chantry area. Permits run 12 months and the vehicle must be registered to your address. You need one proof of residence and one proof of vehicle to apply, and refunds are pro-rata for whole unused months.
Visitor parking is sold as hours, not vouchers, through the same online account. The council’s operational guidance sets the allocation at roughly 20 per cent of a scheme’s annual operating hours, so a zone running ten hours a day, six days a week yields about 600 visitor hours. The per-hour price is reviewed annually and is not published on the permits page. Visitor hours are not valid in council car parks.
Source: East Herts District Council, Parking Permits and Visitor Vouchers.
Station parking
Bishop’s Stortford station car park is not run by the council. It is operated by Saba Park Services on behalf of Greater Anglia, and it is the most expensive parking in the town.
| Period | Station car park (672 spaces) | Premium bay (60 spaces) |
|---|---|---|
| Off-peak | £7.90 | Not offered |
| Daily | £11.00 | Not offered |
| Weekly | £44.00 | Not offered |
| Monthly | £158.00 | Not offered |
| Three monthly | £428.00 | Not offered |
| Annual | £1,540.00 | £2,340.00 |
Source: Greater Anglia, Bishops Stortford station information, checked 26 August 2026. The car park is open 24 hours, seven days.
For comparison, a day at Northgate End is £4.40 against £11.00 at the station. There are also 236 sheltered cycle spaces on the station forecourt, with CCTV.
Airport parking on residential streets
Bishop’s Stortford sits close enough to Stansted that some drivers leave cars on residential roads and take a taxi to the terminal. East Herts does not enforce this itself. It directs residents to report off-site fly parking to Stansted Airport directly.
Also on this site
- Bishop’s Stortford roadworks and travel
- Bishop’s Stortford train times to London
- Bishop’s Stortford bin collection days
- Bishop’s Stortford council tax bands
Every tariff here was read from East Herts District Council’s own car park pages on 26 August 2026. Charges are reviewed each April, and the council’s summary page lags behind the car park pages, so trust the tariff board on the day.
Have your say
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