Parking in St Albans: the bays that only charge for 2 hours

St Albans City and District Council runs the car parks in both St Albans and Harpenden, and almost all of them charge the same tariff. The useful information is not that headline rate. It is the handful of places where the rules break the pattern, and where a bay that looks like it charges all day only charges for two hours of it.

The standard tariff

Nearly every council car park in the district uses this scale, Monday to Saturday up to 6.30pm:

Evenings are cheap and flat. £2.00 covers 6.30pm to 10pm any night of the week, and Sundays, public and bank holidays are £2.70 for the day.

All figures on this page come from the council’s Car Parks and On Street Pay and Display page, checked on 26 August 2026. Off-street prices last rose on 1 January 2026, and on-street and permit prices on 6 April 2026.

The car parks, and which ones break the pattern

Three of those are worth restating, because they cost or save real money:

• Verulamium has no short tariff. If you are visiting the park or the museum for an hour, you pay £2.80 for three hours regardless. It does at least charge the same seven days a week.
• Clarence Park is free for three hours on a weekday and free all day at weekends and on bank holidays. It only has 31 spaces.
• Lydekker in Harpenden is roughly a third cheaper than the council’s own car parks on a long stay, and free at weekends, because Harpenden Town Council owns it.

The council consulted in early 2026 on changing the Clarence Park and Westminster Lodge tariffs. Representations closed on 26 February 2026 and the tariffs above are what the council currently publishes.

Free car parks, and where the catch is

The council lists these as free or limited waiting. Most are genuinely free with no time limit at all:

The catch at BAA Lambs is the shape of the restriction. It is not a morning limit and an afternoon free-for-all. There are two separate one-hour windows, 9am to 11am and 1pm to 3pm, with a free gap between them.

On-street: £2.75 an hour, but often only for two hours a day

Every on-street pay and display bay in the district charges £2.75 an hour from April 2026. What varies is when the charge applies, and on several roads it applies for a two-hour window and nothing else.

These roads are only enforced Monday to Friday, 10am to noon. Outside that window the bays are free:

• Prae Close, one hour maximum
• Sun Lane, two hours
• Carlton Road, two hours
• Breadcroft Lane, two hours
• Devonshire Road, two hours
• Milton Road, two hours

Clarence Road is narrower still, enforced only Monday to Saturday from 2pm to 4pm, one hour maximum.

The city centre streets are the opposite. These charge from 8.30am and run late, with a one-hour no-return period after you leave:

Market Place is charged on four days only, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Wednesday and Saturday are not in the council’s published hours.

Paying is by PayByPhone, or now by cash at a PayPoint store. You need your registration and the location code above. Texting the word CASH followed by the location code to 60075 returns your nearest PayPoint agent.

Permits are priced on your car’s emissions

A resident permit costs whatever your CO2 band says it costs, which is the widest spread of any charge on this page: £16.30 a year for a zero-emission car, £99.50 for the highest band.

Source: St Albans City and District Council, Current Permit Prices and other Charges. Cars registered before March 2001 are banded on engine capacity instead. Third permits are not available in every zone.

Other permit charges:

• visitor parking vouchers, book of 10, £31.20
• 10 all-day resident sessions, £23.50
• business permit, £181.70 a quarter or £728.85 a year
• resident dispensation, all zones, £497.50 a year
• healthcare dispensation, £110.00 a year
• all-zone trades and business permit, £1,000 a year
• parking suspension, £25 admin plus £30 per bay per day
• admin, refund or replacement charge, £13.20

All permits are virtual. Nothing goes in the windscreen, and permits are tied to the registration on your account. To qualify you must be the registered keeper, live at an address on the eligibility list for your controlled parking zone, and spend roughly four nights a week there. Vehicles over 5.25m long, 2.28m high or with more than eight seats are refused.

Season tickets for the car parks are separate and considerably dearer:

• one named surface car park, £1,030 a year
• all 11 surface car parks in St Albans and Harpenden, £1,174.20 a year
• Drovers Way and Russell Avenue multi-storeys, £1,199.95 a year
• Access Permit for the over 70s, £195 a year, valid in all 11 surface car parks
• Senior Citizen permit, £20 a year, means tested on Housing Benefit or Council Tax Reduction, not the single person discount

Blue badge

Blue badge holders get three hours free in every council car park in the district, and more on-street than most boroughs allow:

• free with no time limit in resident bays, permit bays, shared use bays, free limited waiting bays and on-street pay and display bays
• three hours free on single and double yellow lines, provided you set your clock to your arrival time
• a free resident parking permit if you live in a controlled parking zone; a second household car pays the second car rate

The exclusions matter. You cannot use the yellow line concession where loading restrictions apply, which is marked by kerb chevrons rather than by the lines themselves. Suspended bays, loading bays, bus stops and taxi ranks are all out, and so is anything within 10 metres of a junction.

The Blue Badge itself is issued by Hertfordshire County Council, not the district. A marked disabled bay outside your home is a district matter, and one condition rules many applicants out: there must be no off-street parking within 50 metres of the property, including a garage or driveway.

Full detail on the council’s disabled parking page.

Motorcycles

Motorcycles park free in a bay in every council-run car park. There are also three designated on-street motorcycle areas in the city centre, two of which have railings for locking to:

• Russell Avenue, AL3 5EU, about nine spaces, with railings
• Civic Close, AL1 3LE, about six spaces, with railings
• Britton Avenue, AL3 5EJ, about one space, no payment required

The station

St Albans City station has 1,574 parking spaces and eight accessible spaces, according to National Rail. The car park is not the council’s, and we could not verify a current tariff from the operator today, so this page does not quote one. Check the machines or the operator before you leave the car.

Related

• St Albans roadworks and travel
• St Albans bin collection days
• St Albans council tax bands