Parking in Woodbridge: Three Car Parks Give 30 Free

Woodbridge has six council car parks. Three of them let you park free for half an hour. Three do not, and one of those three issued 339 penalty charge notices last year, more than any car park in East Suffolk except one in Lowestoft.

That is the single most useful thing to know before you drive into town, and the council does not put the two lists side by side anywhere. Everything below is from East Suffolk Council’s own tariff sheets, permit schedules and enforcement report, all dated 2026 unless stated.

Checked on 24 August 2026.

The rule that catches everyone

Tariffs at every East Suffolk car park apply daily from 8am to 6pm, including bank holidays. There is no free Sunday and no free bank holiday. The council states this at the top of its car parks and tariffs page.

You also have to register your session immediately on arrival, at a machine or in an app, and the registration you type has to match DVLA records exactly. There is no paper ticket to display, because the session is linked to the plate.

The six car parks and what they cost

Woodbridge is split between two tariff bands. Short stay is the town centre pair; long stay is the four around the edges and the waterfront.

Short stay (Hamblin Road, Oak Lane)

Long stay (Deben, Lime Kiln Quay, The Station, Theatre Street)

Both tables are from the council’s Car Park Tariffs 2026 sheet, in force since 1 April 2026. Note what the two tables mean in practice: a full day is £3.10 cheaper in a long-stay car park, and a month is £62 cheaper.

Where the free 30 minutes applies

The council publishes the free-session list as a separate PDF from the tariff sheet, which is why it is easy to miss. In Woodbridge it covers three car parks only:

• Hamblin Road, IP12 1BG
• Oak Lane, IP12 1DT
• The Station, IP12 4AU

It does not cover Deben, Lime Kiln Quay or Theatre Street. One free 30-minute session per vehicle per car park per day, and you still have to register it at a machine or in the app. An unregistered free session is still a contravention.

Deben car park issues more tickets than almost anywhere in the district

The council’s Civil Parking Enforcement annual report statistics for 2025-26 rank every car park in East Suffolk by penalty charge notices issued. Three Woodbridge car parks are in the district’s top ten:

Only Clapham Road in Lowestoft, on 344, beat Deben. Across the town as a whole, Woodbridge produced 1,686 PCNs in 2025/26, third in the district behind Lowestoft on 6,264 and Felixstowe on 2,372. That was down from 2,105 the year before.

The commonest reason for an off-street ticket, district-wide, is contravention code 83: parked without a valid ticket or session, 3,756 of them last year. The next is code 73, parked without paying at all, on 1,423. Between them they account for more than four out of five off-street tickets in East Suffolk.

Blue Badge holders pay full price in the car parks

This is the trap most likely to cost a local money, and the council states it plainly on its disabled parking page:

Designated disabled parking bays are available in all our off-street car parks. No concessions are available for Blue Badge holders, the standard tariff charges apply to all users.

The badge must still be displayed face up on the dashboard when you use a designated bay, and an expired badge can earn a PCN in its own right. District-wide, 180 tickets were issued last year for using a disabled bay without a valid badge properly displayed.

On-street is different. In East Suffolk a Blue Badge gives you:

• up to 3 hours in a resident permit bay, with no return within 1 hour
• unrestricted parking in time-limited waiting bays

Applications and renewals go through Suffolk County Council, not East Suffolk, and so do requests for a new advisory disabled bay on the highway.

Resident permits: Woodbridge has exactly one street

East Suffolk’s resident permit scheme covers dozens of streets in Lowestoft, nine in Beccles and five in Halesworth. In Woodbridge it covers New Street, and only for specific addresses. That is the whole of the town’s scheme, per the council’s permit scheme locations list.

If you are eligible:

• Cost: £30.00 a year, one permit per property, tied to one vehicle
• Permit bays operate 8am to 8pm daily, not 8am to 6pm like the car parks
• The permit is virtual, so there is nothing to display
• It does not exempt you from yellow lines, loading bays or time-limited bays

Visitor vouchers are £1 each, bought in packs of 10, 20 or 30, up to 30 vouchers in any 30-day period. Each is valid for 24 hours from the start time you choose, and once activated the date and registration cannot be changed.

To apply you need proof of residency (a current-year council tax bill, or a utility bill from the last three months) and proof of vehicle registration. A green new-keeper slip is not accepted; the council wants the V5C or an insurance schedule showing your name, address and registration.

Station parking

The Station car park sits at the Woodbridge station postcode and is run by East Suffolk Council on the long-stay tariff: £5.20 all day, £83 a month, £440 a year, with the first 30 minutes free. For a five-day-a-week commuter the annual ticket works out cheaper than daily payment from about 85 days of use.

National Rail lists 72 spaces at Woodbridge station and no accessible spaces.

Motorhomes and overnight

Overnight parking is allowed in council car parks, but sleeping, cooking or camping in a vehicle is not, unless it is a motorhome in a designated motorhome bay with the motorhome tariff paid. That tariff is £20.00 for 24 hours, maximum stay 3 days, no return within 7 days.

Vehicles over 5.5 metres that do not fit inside a marked bay are not allowed in East Suffolk car parks at all unless designated bays exist. No Woodbridge car park is on the council’s list of sites that take motorhomes. The nearest listed ones are Sutton Heath Picnic Area (IP12 3TG) and Upper Hollesley Common (IP12 3HU), where the council warns about a low tree canopy.

Paying, and what the apps cost

Every car park has at least one coin machine, and since March 2026 all of them also take contactless. Five cashless providers are accepted: RingGo, PayByPhone, JustPark, APCOA and Appyway. Monthly and annual sessions are only available through the cashless providers.

The council is explicit that providers may add a convenience fee, and may charge extra for optional text reminders, and that neither the provider nor the council is obliged to refund a session you bought by mistake. It also warns that text messages claiming you have a parking fine are a scam; genuine East Suffolk PCN references start with the prefix JS.

If you get a ticket

There is a 14-day early payment discount from the date of issue. If you challenge within those 14 days and the challenge is rejected, the council may re-offer the discount, though it is not obliged to.

Do not pay if you intend to appeal, because paying closes off the appeal. Ignoring a PCN leads to a Notice to Owner, then a Charge Certificate that adds 50% and ends your right to appeal, then a warrant and enforcement agents.

The odds at the final stage are worth knowing. Of 15,173 tickets East Suffolk issued in 2025/26, just 29 reached the Traffic Penalty Tribunal. Of those, 21 were dismissed and 6 were allowed.

What the car parks earn

East Suffolk took £4,778,993 from off-street parking payments in 2025/26, up from £3,752,070 the year before. It has 6,557 chargeable off-street spaces and 867 chargeable on-street spaces. On-street permits brought in £75,251, and penalty charges a further £439,771 across on-street and off-street combined.

Also on this site: Woodbridge bin collection days, Woodbridge council tax bands and current roadworks and travel disruption.