Parking in Bath: The Free Hour, and £3.90 Streets

Bath and North East Somerset Council will not tell you what its car parks cost. Every individual car park page on the council website, from Avon Street to Charlotte Street, currently shows the words “No data” where the tariff table should be, and points you at the MiPermit app instead. The prices below come from the council’s own live parking feed, the one those pages are supposed to be reading from, checked in August 2026.

Every price is a range, because Bath charges by tailpipe emissions. The low end is what an electric car or a petrol vehicle under 130g/km pays. The high end is the most polluting band, and diesel sits higher within the range than petrol. The machine and the app work it out from your registration, so you cannot look it up in advance to the penny.

The one thing worth knowing first

Bank holidays split the district in two. Every council car park in Bath charges seven days a week, bank holidays included. Every council car park in Keynsham, Radstock and Midsomer Norton is free on bank holidays until 6pm, and so is all on-street parking in Bath until 7pm.

Free parking, and the traps

There genuinely is free parking in Bath, and it is not where most people look.

• Royal Victoria Park, 40 spaces, 14 of them disabled. The first hour is free, every day, 8am to 6pm. After that it is £2.00 to £3.00 for two hours and £6.00 to £7.80 for four. Outside 8am to 6pm, and all day on bank holidays, it is free.
• Alexandra Park, 48 spaces. Same free first hour, but charges only run 9am to 3pm, so it is free from mid-afternoon onwards. Free all day on bank holidays.
• Larkhall Square, 18 spaces. Free for shoppers for up to two hours, full stop. Two of the 18 bays have EV chargers.
• Green Park Road. Free on Saturdays for the farmers’ market, which the council says runs “until further notice”.
• Motorcycles pay nothing at any on-street location or in a designated bay in most car parks, though maximum stay limits still apply.

The trap is the reverse of the usual one. Bath’s on-street bays look free after 7pm, and are, but the council’s car parks keep charging overnight: £3.50 to £5.30 from 8pm to 8am on top of the day rate. Arrive before 8am or stay past 8pm and the overnight charge is added to your standard tariff, not instead of it.

The second trap is Weston Road. The stretch between Park Lane and the north-east entrance to Royal Victoria Park is currently free, unrestricted kerb. The council consulted in 2026 on charging it at the Royal Victoria Park rate, with the first hour still free. Check the signs before you assume.

Bath car parks

Charges apply every day, 8am to 8pm, unless noted. All figures are the emissions range, cheapest to dearest.

Charlotte Street, Avon Street and Manvers Street are the three long stay car parks and sell up to seven days at a time, at £137.90 to £175.00 for the week. Charlotte Street also has an evening-only rate of £3.80 to £5.70 between 6pm and 8pm.

Points that decide which one you want:

• Charlotte Street has no height restriction and is the council’s own recommendation for vans, motorhomes and campervans. It also has toilets and EV charging. Avon Street is capped at 1.8m, Manvers Street at 2m and the Sports and Leisure Centre at 1.98m.
• The Sports and Leisure Centre opens its charging at 6am, two hours earlier than everywhere else, so an early arrival pays the overnight rate for less time.
• Broad Street no longer takes cash at all. It is MiPermit only. Green Park Road takes MiPermit or exact coins but no cards, and gives no change.
• Odd Down Coach Park charges a flat £1 for anything up to 24 hours.

On-street in Bath

Charges apply every day from 8am to 7pm. Outside those hours, and on bank holidays, on-street parking is free. Pay and display machines take coins but not notes, and every location has a MiPermit code on the sign.

There are three price tiers across the 50-odd streets, and they do not follow the geography you would expect.

Royal Crescent is in the cheapest tier and Avon Street is in the dearest but one, which is the opposite of what the postcode would suggest.

Milsom Street is the odd one out. The council’s tariff data shows charges there only from 8am to 10am and again from 6pm to 7pm, not through the trading day. Check the plate before you park; the bays are not usable in the same way as the rest of the centre.

Lansdown Road Belvedere is the only central location with a single fixed price rather than a range: £1.60 for 30 minutes, £2.80 for an hour, £5.40 for three.

Keynsham, Midsomer Norton and Radstock

Outside Bath the picture is much cheaper, and in two towns the first two hours cost nothing.

Charges run Monday to Saturday, 8am to 6pm, and every one of these car parks is free on bank holidays. Bath Hill East in Keynsham charges Monday to Friday only, so it is free on Saturdays while the rest of the town is not. The council dropped a proposal to introduce Saturday charging there after consultation.

Five more rural car parks have no charge at all:

• High Street, Paulton
• Greenlands Road, Peasedown St John
• Wedmore Road, Saltford
• High Street, Timsbury
• Station Road, Wellow

Some have maximum stay limits that need a ticket displayed, so read the sign. There is no pay and display on-street parking anywhere outside Bath.

Residents’ permits

A residents’ permit is priced on emissions, and since 25 August 2026 also on the size of the vehicle. The emissions element is the base:

All diesel permits cost 25% more than the petrol equivalent. Cars registered before 2001 are charged on engine capacity instead, from £150 to £240 a year for a first permit.

The size supplement is added on top, worked out from length multiplied by width in square metres with the wing mirrors extended. A vehicle under 5m² takes £20 off a first permit. At the top, anything over 14.01m² pays a capped £112.08 on a first permit and £308.22 on a second. Second permits get no discount at any size.

Three rules that catch people out:

• You can hold two permits per property, and only one in the central zone.
• Permits now require a valid MOT at the time of application.
• New builds, redeveloped properties and change-of-use conversions inside existing zones are generally not entitled to permits at all.

Bath Central Zone and Zone 6 permit holders get one useful extra: free overnight parking in Charlotte Street car park, 5.30pm to 10am daily.

Visitor permits are sold in bundles of 100 digital hours. They cost £10 at the moment, the equivalent of £1 a day, and the council has approved a rise to £15 in 2026, £20 in 2027 and £25 in 2028. Permits already bought stay valid for 12 months from purchase.

Season tickets for the long stay car parks are also emissions-priced, and Bath is roughly four times Keynsham:

Changing to a cleaner vehicle mid-term costs a £10 admin fee. Changing to a dirtier one means cancelling and buying again at the new rate.

Blue badges

The rules differ between the street and the car park, and the council’s own pages are the only place that says so.

On-street, a valid blue badge parks free with no time limit in pay and display bays, residents’ parking zones, advisory disabled bays and on-street disabled bays. Some on-street disabled bays are time limited, and there you need the badge and the clock set to your arrival time.

In council car parks, charges normally still apply, even in a marked disabled bay. The council names only two exceptions:

• the disabled bays at the Charlotte Street outer entrance area only, not the main car park
• the Bath Sports and Leisure Centre car park, where a blue badge parks free in a marked bay

Everywhere else, check the tariff board. The bays are enforceable and penalty notices are issued.

Full details, and the form for an advisory bay outside your own home, are on the council’s accessible parking page.

Park and ride, and the Clean Air Zone

Bath has three park and ride sites, all outside the Clean Air Zone:

• Lansdown, service 31
• Newbridge, service 21
• Odd Down, services 41 and 4

Parking is free if you use the bus. Buses run until 11.30pm Monday to Saturday and 6pm on Sundays and public holidays.

If you park and do not take the bus, it is £2 for up to three hours and £3 for up to 24. The council has approved an increase in the 24-hour rate to £4 from October 2026, specifically to push non-bus users out.

The Clean Air Zone does not charge cars. Ordinary cars, SUVs, four-by-fours and campervans in category M1, and motorcycles, pay nothing however old they are. Non-compliant vans, pick-ups, taxis, private hire vehicles and minibuses pay £9 a day, and non-compliant lorries, coaches and buses pay £100. The charge runs midnight to midnight, every day of the year.

If you get a ticket

The council does not publish the penalty amount on either its pay or challenge page, so the figure will only be on the notice itself. The deadlines it does publish are worth knowing:

• You have 28 days from the date of issue to challenge.
• Challenge within 14 days and you keep the reduced amount even if you lose. That is the single most useful line on the council’s page and it is buried near the bottom.
• Challenges must be in writing, online or by post. The council will not take one by phone or in person.
• If a challenge is rejected you get a Notice to Owner after 28 days, then a further 28 days to make a formal representation, and after that the Traffic Penalty Tribunal.

Parking Services is on 01225 477133 or parking@bathnes.gov.uk.

Also on Bath Daily

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• Bath bin collection days and the three recycling centres
• Bath council tax bands for 2026-27