Parking in Kingston: Town Centre Charges Never Stop

Kingston's town centre car parks charge 24 hours a day, bank holidays included. All ten tariffs, where parking is really free, permits and station rates.

Five of Kingston’s ten council car parks charge 24 hours a day, seven days a week, bank holidays included: Ashdown, Canbury Place, Cattle Market, Neville House and the Rose. The Bittoms and the Malden Centre charge round the clock as well, without naming bank holidays. That is the most expensive assumption to get wrong in the borough, and the council states it on each car park page rather than anywhere obvious.

Every figure below comes from the council’s own car park pages and its statutory tariff notices. The current charges took effect on 11 April 2025 and had not been varied as of 30 August 2026.

The ten council car parks

Car park	Where	Hourly	Evening flat rate	Spaces
Ashdown	Ashdown Road, KT1 2NH	£3.30	£3.80	168
Bittoms	The Bittoms, KT1 2AG	£2.70	£3.80	803 multi-storey, 72 surface
Blagdon Road	Blagdon Road, New Malden KT3 4AE	£1	No night rate	108
Canbury Place	Walter Street, KT2 5AA	£2.70	£3.80	106
Cattle Market (surface)	Fairfield North, KT1 2QY	£3.30	£3.80	109
Guildhall	High Street, KT1 1EU	£2.70	No evening charge	61
Hook Community Centre	Hook Road, Chessington KT9 1AA	£1.40	Free after 5.30pm	18
Malden Centre	Cocks Crescent, New Malden KT3 4AF	£2.10	£2.20	83
Neville House	55 Eden Street, KT1 1BW	£3.30	£3.80	32
Rose	Kent Road, KT1 2NB	£2.70	£3.80	417

Day charges run 7am to 7pm and evening rates 7pm to 7am at most of them. The Malden Centre runs its day rate 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Saturday and 11am to 6.30pm on Sunday. Blagdon Road charges 8am to 3pm Monday to Saturday and 11am to 3pm on Sunday. Hook Community Centre charges 9am to 5.30pm Monday to Saturday only. The full tariff notice is on the council’s site.

Three car parks cap the all-day price at £16. Park for more than six hours at the Bittoms, Canbury Place or the Rose and you pay a £16 flat rate covering the whole day and the evening. At the £2.70 hourly rate the cap bites at just under six hours. A long day out is cheaper at those three than at Ashdown or Cattle Market, where there is no cap at all.

Some quirks worth knowing before you drive in:

The Guildhall car park is public on Saturdays only, 8am to 6pm. The rest of the week it is private.
Blagdon Road shuts at 3pm every day, so there is no evening or overnight option in New Malden’s multi-storey.
Both lifts at the Bittoms and both lifts at Blagdon Road are out of order, according to the council’s own car park pages.
Leaving a car in a multi-storey overnight costs £50 to get it released.
Hook Community Centre has a four-hour maximum stay and is the only car park where bank holidays and Sundays are genuinely free.

Electric charge points exist at only four of the ten: three at Blagdon Road, two each at Hook Community Centre and the Rose, and one at the Bittoms. Ashdown, Canbury Place, Malden Centre and the Rose hold Park Mark Safer Parking status.

The council’s tariff notice also sets charges for Thames Side, St Philips Road and Caversham Road. None of the three appears in the council’s own list of car parks, and none has a page of its own. Check the signs on site rather than relying on the notice.

Where parking is free, and where it only looks free

Kingston has 241 free limited-time parking bays across the borough, against 7,009 permit-holder bays and 3,298 shared-use bays. Those are the council’s own figures, published under the transparency code and dated January 2023.

Several controlled parking zones include 30 minutes free, including the central and outer Zone S areas, Zone C and Zone H. The location code on the sign tells you which tariff applies.

Bank holidays are the trap. Most on-street restrictions lift, but the council names three exceptions where you still pay:

all Kingston town centre car parks
paid-for and shared-use spaces in Zones A and A1, covering Kingston town centre
paid-for and shared-use spaces in part of Acre Road, East Road, part of Canbury Park Road, Cowleaze Road, Elm Crescent and Elm Grove

Sundays are the second trap. Restrictions run on Sunday in Zone A1 (11am to 10.30pm), Zone B town centre and inner areas, Zone C, permit areas DB and DC, and Cottage Grove in Surbiton, which is permit holders only Monday to Sunday, 8am to 10.30pm. Thames Street and Bishops Hall have their own Sunday window of 12pm to 5pm.

At the other end, several zones stop early enough that evenings are free. Zone R at Riverside runs Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm only. Zone V’s Hill Crescent, Hillside Road and Minstrel Gardens run Monday to Friday, 10am to 3pm. Zone G in the Grove area does not operate at all on Saturdays.

On-street tariffs range from £2.10 an hour in Zone V’s no-maximum-stay area to £3.90 an hour on Ashdown Road, Fife Road, Ladybooth Road, The Bittoms, Downhall Road, Fairfield Road, Hardman Road and Old London Road. The full table of every street and its hourly rate runs to more than 60 entries.

Permits

A resident permit is needed if your street is in a controlled parking zone or permit parking area. Each adult in a household is allowed one, and the price rises steeply with each one:

Length	First permit	Second	Third
1 month	£30.80	£46.20	£61.60
3 months	£48.70	£73.10	£97.50
6 months	£77	£115.50	£153.90
12 months	£123.10	£184.70	£246.20

The electric vehicle resident permit has been withdrawn. The council’s tariff notice lists all four durations of the fully electric vehicle permit as withdrawn, so an EV now pays the standard rate.

Applying takes two proofs of address, one no more than three months old and the other no more than six, plus proof that the vehicle is yours. A V5C, an insurance document or a lease agreement all count. New arrivals can get a one-off three-month temporary permit for £51.30 on a tenancy agreement or solicitor’s letter.

Visitor sessions are bought through the same account:

67p for one hour
£1.80 for six hours
£3.60 for 24 hours

The minimum purchase is 10 sessions and the cap is 200 sessions per household per year. Sessions do not expire, and you can activate one up to 60 days ahead. If you have no internet access, paper scratchcards cost £6.70 for ten one-hour cards, £18 for ten six-hour and £36 for ten 12-hour, ordered on 0345 319 9636.

Business permits are far dearer: £410.40 for the first, £564.30 for the second and £666.90 for the third and beyond. A medical care permit is £123 for the year, a childcare permit £307.80 and a charity permit £109.80.

Blue badge

A Blue Badge in Kingston buys more than a disabled bay. The council’s rules allow badge holders to park:

free and without a time limit in resident permit bays, pay and display bays and shared-use bays
for up to three hours on single yellow lines, and on double yellow lines without kerb marks
free in any space in a council car park, disabled bay or not

Where a space carries a time limit, set your parking clock to your arrival time and display it with the badge.

A badge does not work in suspended bays, time-restricted free bays, car club bays, loading bays, bays reserved for other vehicle types, red routes or electric charging bays.

At the Bittoms, Cattle Market and the Rose, all three of which are pay-on-exit, blue badge holders should not leave the badge in the car. Present it at the pay station instead to authorise the exit. At the Rose that means the level 3 pay station, where the disabled and parent bays are.

The Bittoms has 18 disabled spaces and the Rose 16, the two largest. Ashdown has eight, Blagdon Road, Cattle Market and Malden Centre seven each, Canbury Place five, the Guildhall four, and Neville House and Hook Community Centre two each.

Station parking

Every station in the borough except Kingston itself has a car park, and none of them is cheap for a commuter. Rates are from the National Rail station pages.

Station	Spaces	Daily	Annual
Surbiton	446	£14	£1,953
Norbiton	37	£9	£1,256
New Malden	12	£8	£1,116
Tolworth	30	£4.80	£668
Malden Manor	18	£4.50	£626
Chessington North	15	£4.50	£626
Chessington South	4	£4.50	£626

Kingston station has no car park at all, which matters because it is the borough’s busiest station and sits in the middle of the zone where charges never stop. Berrylands has no chargeable spaces either, just one accessible bay.

At Norbiton, Tolworth, Malden Manor and both Chessington stations, the hourly rate is available from noon and through RingGo only. Off-peak rates start at noon Monday to Friday. Blue badge holders park free at these car parks once registered.

Fines

Penalty charges rose on 7 April 2025 and apply across all 32 London boroughs:

£140 for a higher-level parking contravention, halved to £70 within 14 days
£90 for a lower-level contravention, halved to £45 within 14 days
£160 for a bus lane or moving traffic contravention

A clamp release is £100, a pound release £280, storage £55 a day and disposal £100.

Kingston issued 69,419 penalty charge notices in 2024-25, down from 80,031 the year before, and its on-street parking account ran a surplus of £2,555,118. Of the PCNs issued, 51,587 were paid and 42,326 of those at the discount rate. The figures are in the council’s statutory parking account for 2024-25. The surplus is legally ringfenced, and the council reports it was spent in full by 31 March 2025 on approved transport and highways projects.

Paying, and the QR code scam

Payment is by RingGo, by phone, or with cash at any PayPoint shop. Each car park has its own RingGo code: Ashdown 26503, Canbury Place 26504, Malden Centre 26507, Neville House 26509, Blagdon Road 26563, Guildhall 26564 and Hook Community Centre 26562.

The council warns on every car park page that there are three ways to pay by RingGo and a QR code is not one of them. Do not scan QR codes on parking signage in Kingston. Report one to APCOA on 07974 296852, or to 101 outside 7am to 10pm Monday to Saturday and 10.30am to 10pm on Sunday.