Britannia costs £1.80 all day on a Sunday and 80p overnight. Full 2026 tariffs for nine council car parks, the free hours in Dedham, and the St John's lock-up trap.
Colchester’s car parks are not priced the way you would guess. The cheapest Sunday in the city centre is £1.80 for the whole day at Britannia, a car park with 369 spaces. The most expensive short stay is Vineyard Street, where two hours costs £5.60 and there is no longer tariff at all.
Everything below comes from Colchester City Council’s own car park pages, read on 24 August 2026. The council owns and prices the car parks; the North Essex Parking Partnership administers and enforces both on-street and off-street parking on its behalf.
City centre tariffs
| Car park | Spaces | 1 hour | 2 hours | 4 hours | All day or 12 hours | Overnight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Britannia | 369 | £2.60 | £4.00 | £5.00 | £11.00 | £1.40 |
| St John's (multi-storey) | 645 | £2.70 | £4.00 | £5.50 | £15.00 | locked |
| St Mary's (multi-storey) | 577 | £2.70 | £4.00 | £5.50 | £15.00 | £2.40 after 6pm |
| Priory Street | 169 | £2.70 | £4.00 | £5.00 | £13.80 | £2.40 after 6pm |
| Vineyard Street | 80 | £3.40 | £5.60 | no tariff | no tariff | £1.20 |
| Sheepen Road | 54 | — | — | £5.60 | £8.20 over 4 hours | £0.80 |
| Butt Road | 120 | — | — | — | £4.70 day rate | £0.80 |
| Napier Road North | 85 | — | — | — | £4.70 day rate | £0.80 |
| Napier Road South | 32 | — | — | — | £4.70 day rate | £0.80 |
Day rates run 6am to 6pm and overnight rates 6pm to 6am unless the council says otherwise. Sources are the individual car park pages linked from the city centre car parks index.
The Sunday and evening prices worth knowing
Britannia is the outlier. It is the only city centre car park with a separate Sunday tariff, and it is £1.80 for the whole day, 6am to 6pm. On a Monday to Saturday the same car park charges £11.00 for up to 12 hours.
Sheepen Road also drops on a Sunday, to £3.20 all day. On a weekday it has no all-day rate at all: it is £5.60 up to four hours, then £8.20 over four hours.
Evenings are cheap almost everywhere. Overnight at Butt Road, Sheepen Road and both Napier Road car parks is 80p. Britannia is £1.40 from 6pm to 6am, and Vineyard Street £1.20. St Mary’s and Priory Street both charge £2.40 for entry after 6pm until midnight.
The council also runs a set of app-only offers on its best parking offers page. Four hours anywhere in St John’s, St Mary’s or Priory Street is £3.70 if you pay through MiPermit rather than the machine, and a 2pm to 6am stay bought before 6pm is £3.20.
Free hours, and where they are
There is no free town centre parking in Colchester. There are four ways to pay nothing, and each has a catch.
- Dedham. The first hour is free at both Mill Lane and Mill Pond, 8am to 6pm, seven days a week. After that it is £1.50 for two hours and £5.80 over four.
- Wivenhoe. The first 30 minutes are free at Cooks Yard B, which has nine spaces. An hour is 50p and the whole day is £4.
- Colchester Sports Park at Northern Gateway. The first 30 minutes are free, but the council is explicit that a free stay by a non-sports-centre user “must be registered on MiPermit”. Turn up, park and walk away and you are not covered.
- Leisure World. Free if you are using the facilities, but you have to log your stay at the parking machines in reception.
Motorcycles park free in the dedicated motorcycle bays at Britannia, St Mary’s, Priory Street, Vineyard Street, Sheepen Road, both Napier Road car parks, High Woods and Cooks Yard B. Coaches park free in the two designated coach bays at Dedham’s Mill Lane.
Two closures and a lock-up that catch people out
St John’s is locked overnight. The multi-storey opens 5am to 7pm Monday to Sunday and is locked between 7pm and 5am. On public holidays it opens only 9.30am to 5pm, so a bank holiday shopping trip that starts at nine finds it shut. It closes completely on Christmas Day.
St Mary’s shuts its entrance lane at weekends. From 10pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights the entrance lane is closed until 5am the next morning. Vehicles inside can still exit at any time, so this strands people trying to get in rather than out.
Britannia has lost 92 spaces. The council says the western end of the car park is temporarily closed for archaeological investigations, expected to take up to seven weeks. The rest is open.
The Sports Park car park at Northern Gateway also closes early on bank holidays, at 6pm, against 10.30pm on a normal weekday.
Napier Road: the council prices it three different ways
If you are trying to work out what Park Active actually costs, the council’s pages contradict each other, and this is worth knowing before you plan a commute.
- The Park Active page says members “can park at Napier Road North or Napier Road South for £0.60 per hour”.
- The best parking offers page lists Napier Road North and South at 80p, Monday to Saturday 6am to 6pm, for Park Active users.
- The Napier Road car park pages themselves show a day rate of £4.70 and add “You need a Park Active permit to use this tariff.”
The same two pages also disagree on the MiPermit location numbers. Park Active gives 337838 and 337841; the car park pages give 737838 and 737841, which match the numbering used for every other Colchester car park.
Park Active is a British Parking Association scheme, run through MiPermit, and the idea is that you park outside the centre and walk or cycle the rest of the way. Registration is free but you have to agree to take part in future surveys and to let the council use your postcode and anonymised parking data. The council warns that the discounted rate “may change or be withdrawn at short notice”.
Permits
Resident and visitor permits are issued by the North Essex Parking Partnership, not directly by the city council, and applications go through MiPermit.
| Permit | Price |
|---|---|
| Resident, first permit, 12 months | £78.00 |
| Resident, second permit, 12 months | £125.00 |
| Visitor, 10 stays of 24 hours | £18.00 |
| Visitor, 10 stays of 6 hours | £10.00 |
| Carer, 12 months | £38.00 |
| Dedham exemption certificate, 12 months | £32.00 |
| Trader, 12 months | £250.00 |
Priory Street has its own resident permits at the same £78 and £125. Separate residential permits cover Bergholt Road, Walsingham Road, St Mary’s surface car park, Alexandra Terrace, St Julian Grove and Three Crowns Road, and the partnership does not publish those prices online.
Season tickets in the council car parks are steeper. Twelve months is £2,000 at St John’s, St Mary’s and Priory Street, £1,055 at Butt Road, £1,022 at Sheepen Road and £555 at Napier Road North or South. High Woods Country Park has a twelve-month season ticket at £65, but it carries a two-hour maximum stay.
Priory Street sells an unusual annual parent permit for the school run: £31.10 for 8.30am to 9.30am, £31.10 for 3pm to 4pm, or £52.20 for both, subject to availability.
Blue Badge
Blue Badge holders park free for up to three hours in any bay in Colchester City Council car parks, with the badge displayed and the clock set to the time of arrival. It is three hours, not all day, and it is not unlimited.
The exception is LoveurCar bays, which Blue Badge holders cannot use free. There are five at Britannia, five at Vineyard Street, three at St Mary’s and two at St John’s.
Marked disabled bays are concentrated where you would want them: 14 at St John’s, 11 plus eight Shopmobility bays at St Mary’s, 17 at Leisure World, nine at Britannia, eight at Butt Road and seven at Priory Street. Sheepen Road and High Woods have no designated disabled bays at all.
Badges are issued by Essex County Council, not the city council. It is currently processing applications and renewals received on 3 August 2026, and says an application can take up to 12 weeks from the point it has all the supporting evidence.
Station parking
Colchester station has 935 parking spaces and 24 accessible spaces, according to National Rail’s station page. The car park is not a council one: it is operated for Greater Anglia, and its tariffs are set by the operator. We could not read the operator’s own tariff page today, so this page does not quote a price for it.
The nearest council alternatives to the station are Sheepen Road and Britannia.
Out of the centre
| Car park | Spaces | Short stay | Longer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leisure World | 439 | £2.20 an hour weekdays, £2.40 weekends | £11.60 for 24 hours weekdays, £12.10 weekends |
| Sports Park, Northern Gateway | 300 | Free for 30 minutes, then £2.20 up to 2 hours | £3.30 up to 8 hours, £8.80 up to 24 hours |
| High Woods Country Park | 70 | £1.50 up to 2 hours | £4.00 for 2 to 4 hours, £8.00 over 4 hours |
| Dedham, Mill Lane and Mill Pond | 127 each | First hour free, then £1.50 up to 2 hours | £2.90 up to 4 hours, £5.80 over 4 hours |
| Wivenhoe, Cooks Yard B | 9 | First 30 minutes free, then 50p an hour | £4.00 over 6 hours |
High Woods closes at night: 7.30am to 10pm from 1 April to 30 September, and 7.30am to 7pm from 1 October to 31 March. The Sports Park charges £16.50 for special events, advertised separately on MiPermit.
Electric vehicle charging is thin on the ground in the council’s car parks. Priory Street has the only charging points, and they are paid for through MiPermit.
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