Parking in Oxford: £5 Charge Ends 28 September

On Monday 28 September 2026, Oxford’s temporary congestion charge is replaced by a traffic filter trial at the same six points. The practical change is simple and it matters more than any tariff on this page: you will no longer be able to pay £5 to drive through. Cars without a permit will be fined instead.

Below are the current car park charges, the on-street tariffs, what a resident permit costs in each of Oxford’s 51 controlled parking zones, and where a Blue Badge does and does not get you free parking. Every figure was taken from Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council on 1 September 2026.

What changes on 28 September

The county council confirms the trial starts on Monday 28 September 2026, following Network Rail’s revised programme to reopen Botley Road on 20 September.

Existing permits transfer automatically, with one exception. The central permit area is being abolished, because with Botley Road open every part of Oxford can be reached without passing a filter. Central area residents move to the Oxford permit area and 100 day passes. Central area visitor permits, workplace parking permits and sports club permits all expire when the congestion charge ends, and unused day passes on them will not be valid.

For the first six months of the trial, a first contravention gets a warning notice rather than a fine.

The six locations and their hours do not change:

They operate on bank holidays. Outside those hours any vehicle passes freely, permit or not. Vans, lorries, minibuses, coaches and motorcycles are never affected. Electric cars are not exempt.

Under the congestion charge, four car parks can only be reached by paying: Westgate, the rail station, Oxpens and Worcester Street. From 28 September that route needs a permit instead, or a different approach.

City centre car parks

Oxford City Council runs the council car parks. These are the three closest to the centre.

Gloucester Green and Worcester Street charge more at weekends: £6.80 for an hour and £10.10 for two on Saturday and Sunday. Their daytime tariff runs 8am to 8pm, with a flat £6.30 (£6.80 at weekends) for 8pm to 8am. Oxpens uses a different clock: daytime is 6am to 5pm and the evening rate is £5.70.

Sources: the council’s directory records for Gloucester Green, Worcester Street and Oxpens.

Two things worth knowing before you choose. Gloucester Green is underground, has no lift and is described by the council as unsuitable for disabled users, wheelchairs and prams. Its height limit is 1.83 metres and it is locked at midnight: a car left inside cannot be recovered until 7.30am. Worcester Street and Oxpens are both open 24 hours.

Car parks outside the centre

These are far cheaper and all sit on good bus routes.

St Clement’s is 80 spaces and takes coins, notes or card. The rest of the list is cashless. Cutteslowe only charges between 10am and 6pm, so it is free outside those hours. Full details are in the council’s car park directory.

Bury Knowle Park in Headington is free for up to two hours, but you must still take a ticket from the machine, and there is no return within two hours. Beyond that it is £4 for up to three hours. It has six spaces.

Park and ride is the cheapest way in by a wide margin

Since 17 August 2026 there has been a £3 combined ticket covering up to 16 hours’ parking and return bus travel into Oxford for up to five people of any age. It runs until the end of March 2027 and is funded from congestion charge income.

Set against the city centre, the gap is not close. Eight to 24 hours at Gloucester Green is £41.90. Sixteen hours at a park and ride, with a return bus trip for five people, is £3.

Park and ride parking on its own:

The combined ticket must be bought at the site or through the RingGo app, and it is valid on any Stagecoach, Oxford Bus Company or Thames Travel bus that stops inside a park and ride site, not only the branded park and ride services. You show the driver your parking ticket or an active RingGo session; no bus ticket is issued. Details are on the county’s combined ticket page.

Longer-term parking permits, valid at Redbridge, Seacourt, Pear Tree, Oxford Parkway and Thornhill, cost £45 for 28 days, £115 for a quarter and £380 for a year. They do not include bus travel, and they are non-refundable in any circumstance. Changing the registration on one costs £15.

Blue Badge holders park free in any bay at a park and ride, displaying a badge and clock.

One caveat while Botley Road remains closed: Seacourt’s buses terminate at Osney Island, so you walk in from there or pick up a transfer. That is expected to end when the road reopens on 20 September.

On-street: it charges on Sundays, and until 10pm

Central Oxford’s pay and display bays are run by Oxfordshire County Council, not the city, and their charging hours are longer than most people expect: Monday to Sunday, 8am to 10pm. All restrictions also apply on bank holidays unless a sign says otherwise.

Zone 1 covers Merton Street, King Edward Street, Cromwell Street, Beaumont Street, St Giles, Keble Road, Blackhall Road, Museum Road, Parks Road, Savile Road, Mansfield Road, Longwall Street, Woodstock Road and Wellington Square.

Zone 2 covers Walton Street, Great Clarendon Street, Norham Gardens, Norham Road, Fyfield Road, Crick Road, Bradmore Road and Benson Place.

Two details are worth having. There is no return within one hour in either zone, so you cannot feed the machine and stay. And a one, two or three hour ticket bought with an expiry time of 6.31pm or later is valid for the whole evening period, which makes a late-afternoon ticket better value than an evening one. Both come from the county’s on-street parking page.

The county also warns that fake QR codes have been stuck on its pay and display machines. It does not use QR codes for payment at all, so any you see on a machine is a scam.

Resident permits: what your zone actually costs

The county publishes permit prices only inside an interactive map, so there is no price list to read. We pulled the underlying data from the council’s own controlled parking zone layer on 1 September 2026. It covers 70 zones across Oxfordshire, of which 51 are in Oxford.

The headline is that Oxford is almost flat-rate. Forty-three of the 51 Oxford zones charge £84 for a first resident permit. The exceptions are the interesting part.

The four £21 zones sit around the Kassam Stadium and only operate on Sunday mornings and match days, which is why they cost a quarter of the standard rate. Waterside and William Lucy Way issue visitor permits only: if you live there you cannot buy a resident permit at any price.

Second permits cost the same as the first everywhere in Oxford. Whether you can have one depends on the zone:

• 29 Oxford zones allow one permit per resident and a maximum of two per property.
• 20 Oxford zones allow one per resident with no cap per property. These are the Headington zones, north Oxford, Cutteslowe, North Summertown, Norham Manor, Marston South, Northway, Lakes, Lye Valley, Wood Farm, Girdlestone Road and the four stadium zones.

In sixteen of those twenty, a third permit is £168 and a fourth £287. Headington Quarry East is the exception at £275 for a fourth. In the four stadium zones every permit stays £21.

Hours vary sharply between neighbouring zones and this is where fines happen. Jericho, East Oxford, Divinity Road, Iffley Fields, Magdalen North and South, South Oxford, Walton Manor, West Oxford and the four Central Area zones all operate seven days a week, 24 hours. Florence Park, Wolvercote, Northway, Wood Farm and several Headington zones operate Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm and are unrestricted the rest of the time.

Two rules apply everywhere. A resident permit is for one named vehicle and each eligible applicant gets one. And the vehicle must be no more than 2 metres high, 5 metres long, 2 metres wide and 2,250kg.

Visitor permits are capped at 50 a year

Visitor permits are virtual, issued in sets of 25 single-day passes, and limited to 50 per resident per year. Once the allocation is used, no more can be bought at any price. The applicant must be 17 or over. The county’s reasoning, on its visitor permit page, is that there is roughly one on-street space per house frontage in most Oxford zones.

Blue Badge: it depends entirely on which car park

There is no single Oxford rule, and the split is counter-intuitive.

• No concession at all: Gloucester Green, Worcester Street, Oxpens and Alexandra Courts. The three main city centre car parks are the ones where a Blue Badge buys you nothing.
• Four hours free: St Clement’s, Summertown, Headington and Union Street.
• Free in any bay: the park and ride sites, Hinksey Park, Cutteslowe, Walton Well Road and Bury Knowle Park.

On-street, a Blue Badge holder displaying a valid badge does not need a resident parking permit.

Motorcycles

Motorbikes, mopeds and scooters park free in any bay at Worcester Street, Oxpens, St Clement’s, Summertown, Headington and Union Street. Gloucester Green is listed as unsuitable. At park and ride sites, standard car charges apply to motorcycles. Motorcycles are not affected by the traffic filters at any time.

Also on The Oxford Post: Oxford roadworks and travel, Oxford bin collection days and Oxford council tax bands.