From 28 September the council charges £1.60 between 6pm and 8am in every Banbury car park. Sundays are charged too. Full tariffs, Castle Quay and the station.
Cherwell District Council put its car park tariffs up on 30 June 2026. Every one of its Banbury car parks now shows “from 30/06/2026” against the prices on the council’s own records. An hour costs £1.60 and a full day in a long stay car park costs £7.50.
Two rules apply everywhere in the council’s Banbury car parks:
- Charges run 8:00am to 6:00pm. Parking is free after 6:00pm, every night, but only until 28 September 2026.
- Sundays and bank holidays are charged. They are cheaper, not free. It is £1.60 for up to an hour and a £2.20 flat rate beyond that.
That second one is the trap. A car park that is empty and unbarriered on a Sunday morning is still a car park you have to pay for until 6pm.
From Monday 28 September 2026 the free evening ends. The council has given statutory notice that a charge of £1.60 for up to 14 hours will apply between 6pm and 8am, every day, in its car parks in Banbury and Bicester. Season ticket prices rise on the same date. What changes, car park by car park.
What the council’s Banbury car parks cost
Long stay car parks let you stay all day. Short stay ones cap you at three hours and add “no return within 1 hour on the same day”, so you cannot feed the machine twice and stay on.
| Car park | Type | Spaces | 1 hr | 2 hrs | 3 hrs | 4 hrs | Day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Market Place | Ultra-short | 41 | £2.30 | - | - | - | - |
| Horsefair West | Short | 45 | £1.60 | £2.80 | £3.90 | - | - |
| Calthorpe Street (West Side) | Short | 31 | £1.60 | £2.80 | £3.90 | - | - |
| Calthorpe Street (East) | Short | 17 | £1.60 | £2.80 | £3.90 | - | - |
| North Bar (East) | Short | 32 | £1.60 | £2.80 | £3.90 | - | - |
| South Bar (East), Banbury Cross to Calthorpe Street | Short | 27 | £1.60 | £2.80 | £3.90 | - | - |
| Spiceball Park (The Mill) | Short | 33 | £1.60 | £2.80 | £3.90 | - | - |
| Spiceball Park (Chamberlaine Court) | Short | 50 | £1.60 | £2.80 | £3.90 | - | - |
| Upper Windsor Street | Long | 115 | £1.60 | £2.80 | £3.90 | £5.00 | £7.50 |
| Bolton Road (pay on exit) | Long | 150 | £1.60 | £2.80 | £3.90 | £5.00 | £7.50 |
| South Bar (East) | Long | 90 | £1.60 | £2.90 | £3.90 | £5.00 | £7.50 |
| South Bar (West) | Long | 90 | £1.60 | £2.90 | £3.90 | £5.00 | £7.50 |
| Compton Road | Long | 80 | £1.60 | £2.80 | £3.90 | £5.00 | £7.50 |
| Calthorpe Street (West Side) | Long | 79 | £1.60 | £2.80 | £3.90 | £5.00 | £7.50 |
| Spiceball Park (Riverside) | Long | 44 | £1.60 | £2.80 | £3.90 | £5.00 | £7.50 |
| North Bar (West) | Long | 31 | £1.60 | £2.80 | £3.90 | £5.00 | £7.50 |
| Cherwell Drive (pay on exit) | Long | 37 + 1 | £1.60 | £2.80 | £3.90 | £5.00 | £7.50 |
All charges include VAT. Every one of these is free after 6:00pm until 28 September 2026, when the overnight charge of £1.60 starts.
Market Place is the ultra-short stay one and it works differently: £1.60 for up to 30 minutes, £2.30 for up to an hour, and then you are out, with no return within an hour the same day. It has 41 pay and display bays and seven blue badge bays.
Two car parks charge a penny more for two hours. South Bar (East) and South Bar (West) list £2.90 where every other Banbury car park lists £2.80. That is what the council publishes for each of them, so check the board before you assume the price is the same as the last car park you used.
The cheapest short stop in the town centre is Bridge Street. The drop-off and pick-up bays there are 50p for up to 15 minutes, four bays only, no return within an hour. That goes up to 70p on 28 September 2026.
Where parking is genuinely free
- After 6:00pm in every council car park, seven days a week, with no time limit overnight. This ends on 28 September 2026.
- Blue badge bays, free of charge up to the maximum stay for that car park (see below).
- Motorcycles in the designated motorcycle areas at North Bar (East), South Bar (East, Banbury Cross to Calthorpe Street), Calthorpe Street (West Side, long stay) and Bridge Street. At the other car parks a motorbike must use a marked bay and pay the normal charge.
- The first 20 minutes at the station, in designated bays on the ground floor of the East side multi-storey.
There is no free daytime parking in Banbury town centre. Anything that looks free between 8am and 6pm is worth reading the sign for.
Castle Quay
The two Castle Quay car parks, South and North 1, are run by the shopping centre, not the council, and price differently:
| Stay | Charge |
|---|---|
| Up to 1 hour | £1.60 |
| 1 to 2 hours | £2.50 |
| 2 to 3 hours | £3.20 |
| 3 to 4 hours | £4.00 |
| 4 to 5 hours | £5.40 |
| Over 5 hours | £7.50 |
| Sundays, all day | £1.60 |
| Bank holidays, all day | £1.60 |
Both are open 24 hours and free from 6pm to 7am. For a two or three hour shopping trip Castle Quay undercuts the council car parks by 30p and 70p. For a full day they cost the same. On a Sunday, £1.60 all day beats the council’s £2.20 flat rate. There are electric vehicle chargers at North 1.
The station
Banbury station has 978 spaces across three car parks: the multi-storey, the main car park and the approach road car park. Prices are the same at all three, and Chiltern Railways sets them:
| Period | Charge |
|---|---|
| Daily | £9.70 |
| Off-peak (from 12:00 on weekdays) | £6.80 |
| Saturday | £6.80 |
| Sunday | £6.80 |
| Weekly | £38.80 |
| Monthly | £155.20 |
| Annual | £1,629.60 |
Free short stay parking, maximum 20 minutes, is available in designated bays on the ground floor of the East side multi-storey, which is reached from Higham Way off Merton Street, postcode OX16 4AA. That is the drop-off option.
There are 14 accessible spaces. Parking is free for blue badge holders in those spaces, but you have to register: take the badge to the station ticket office so staff can record your registration number, or register in advance through APCOA.
Weekday commuters should compare that £9.70 with the council’s £7.50 day rate at Upper Windsor Street or Bolton Road, both a short walk from the platforms.
Blue badge parking
Parking is free of charge for blue badge holders in Cherwell’s car parks, up to the maximum stay for that car park, and the council’s enforcement policy adds “an additional hours parking is provided for all Blue Badge holders”. The badge must be displayed and the time-of-arrival clock accurately set.
Where the blue badge bays are in Banbury:
- North Bar (East): 7 bays
- Market Place: 7 bays
- Bolton Road: 7 bays
- Spiceball Park (The Mill): 6 bays
- Calthorpe Street (West Side, short stay): 3 bays
- Calthorpe Street (East): 3 bays
- Bridge Street, south side: 3 bays, blue badge holders only, no other parking
- Horsefair West: 2 bays
- Spiceball Park (Riverside): 2 bays
- Cherwell Drive: 1 bay
Blue badges themselves are issued by Oxfordshire County Council, not Cherwell.
Resident permits
On-street residents’ parking is a county council matter, and Banbury got two new schemes this month. Nine streets came into controlled parking on 17 August 2026, and a permit costs £80 a year. In the Hightown Road area most residents who responded to the consultation objected and it went ahead anyway. We covered how that decision was made.
Applications go through Oxfordshire County Council.
Season tickets, paying and fines
Season tickets for the council’s long stay car parks come in one, three and twelve month lengths, for either five days a week or seven. The council does not publish the prices on its website: its season ticket page sends you to APCOA and says purchase through RingGo is coming. The only prices in the published car park order date from 2011 and no longer match the tariffs being charged, so we have left them out rather than quote a figure that is probably wrong. Get the current price from APCOA.
You can pay by cash, card or phone. Phone parking is RingGo: enter the five-digit location code from the signs, not a QR code. RingGo does not use QR codes on any of its signs, so a QR sticker in a Cherwell car park is a scam. There can be a small convenience fee for paying by phone.
Enforcement is not done by the council. Since 1 April 2023 Cherwell has an agency agreement with Oxfordshire County Council, which subcontracts to Conduent. Penalty charge notices carry a 50 per cent reduction if paid within 14 days of the date they were served, and must be paid or challenged within 28 days. Do not pay if you intend to challenge: a challenge cannot be accepted once you have paid.
More Banbury local information: bin collection days, council tax bands, roadworks and travel and trains to London.
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