Every Lichfield city car park charges £2.10 all day on Sunday and bank holidays. Beacon Park is free then, Burntwood always, and four hours short stay is £8.40.
Lichfield District Council runs three separate parking regimes and they price almost nothing the same way. A four-hour stay costs £8.40 in a short stay car park, £1.60 in a long stay one 200 metres away, and £2.00 at Beacon Park. A full day costs £21.10, £4.30 and £10 respectively.
Sunday is where most people get it wrong. There is a widespread belief that council car parks in Lichfield are free on a Sunday. They are not. Every city centre car park, short stay and long stay alike, charges £2.10 for the whole day on Sundays and on bank holidays. Only the three Beacon Park car parks are free then, and only Burntwood’s are free all the time.
Every figure on this page comes from the council’s own car park records and from the statutory order that sets them, the Lichfield District Council (Off-Street Parking Places) (Civil Enforcement and Consolidation) Order 2026, operative from 1 April 2026.
What it costs, by car park type
Short stay: free for 30 minutes, then it climbs fast
Charges apply 7.30am to 6.30pm. The first 30 minutes is free, but you have to collect a ticket from the machine to claim it.
| Length of stay | Charge |
|---|---|
| Up to 30 minutes | Free, ticket required |
| 30 minutes to 1 hour | £1.00 |
| Up to 2 hours | £3.70 |
| Up to 3 hours | £5.30 |
| Up to 4 hours | £8.40 |
| Up to 24 hours | £21.10 |
| Sunday, all day | £2.10 |
| Bank holiday, all day | £2.10 |
The short stay car parks are Bird Street (WS13 6PR, 139 spaces plus 26 blue badge bays and 6 motorcycle bays), Sandford Street (WS13 6QA, 63 spaces), Friary Inner (WS13 6QH, 45 spaces), District Council House (WS13 6HP, 55 spaces on weekdays and 133 at weekends) and the upper deck of Lombard Street (WS13 6DW, 100 spaces and 18 blue badge bays).
The step from three hours to four is the one to watch: £5.30 becomes £8.40, and anything beyond four hours is charged at the full £21.10. A five-hour stay in a short stay car park costs eight times what it costs in a long stay one.
Long stay: £4.30 for the whole day
Same hours, 7.30am to 6.30pm, and a much flatter tariff.
| Length of stay | Charge |
|---|---|
| Up to 4 hours | £1.60 |
| Up to 6 hours | £2.60 |
| Up to 24 hours | £4.30 |
| Sunday, all day | £2.10 |
| Bank holiday, all day | £2.10 |
These are The Friary multi storey (WS13 6QE, 365 spaces, 21 blue badge bays, 8 motorcycle and 10 cycle spaces, 2 electric charge points), Birmingham Road next to Lichfield City station (WS13 6HX, 34 spaces), Redcourt on Gresley Road (WS13 6GF, 79 spaces), the Bus Station car park on Frog Lane (WS13 6HP, 48 spaces, 8 blue badge, 10 motorcycle), Greenhill (WS13 6GF, only 13 spaces), University East (WS13 6NT, 48 spaces), University West (WS13 6QG, 116 spaces) and the lower deck of Lombard Street on weekdays.
Two details on that list. The bus station car park has moved to the site of the former police station. And the lower deck at Lombard Street flips: it is long stay Monday to Friday and short stay at weekends, so the Saturday tariff on the same tarmac is the £3.70 and £8.40 scale.
The Friary multi storey is the only one with no ticket. It runs on number plate recognition with no entry barrier, and you pay at a terminal on the ground floor or in the foyer before you leave.
One warning about the council’s own website. Its city car parks landing page still says four hours is £1.50, six hours £2.50 and all day £4.00. The individual car park records and the 2026 statutory order both say £1.60, £2.60 and £4.30. The order is the legal instrument, and it is the one the machines follow.
Beacon Park: cheap for an hour, expensive for a day
The three car parks serving Beacon Park are priced for park visits, not for commuters. Shaw Lane (WS13 7AG, 39 spaces) and Bunkers Hill on Lower Sandford Street (WS13 6RA, 58 spaces) charge 50p for an hour, £1 for two, £1.50 for three, £2 for four and £10 for the day. Greenhough Road (WS13 7AW, 77 spaces) charges 50p for two hours and £1 for four, again £10 for the day.
Their operating hours differ, which is easy to get wrong:
- Shaw Lane and Greenhough Road: charges apply 7.30am to 3.30pm
- Bunkers Hill: charges apply 10am to 4pm
All three are Monday to Saturday, and all three are free all day on Sundays and on bank holidays. The bank holiday exemption is in the 2026 order but not on the council’s own web pages, which mention only Sunday.
The 2026 order’s entry for Greenhough Road appears to have picked up Shaw Lane’s rows: it lists both £1.00 for four hours and £2.00 for four hours. The council’s own car park record for Greenhough Road lists the shorter version, 50p for two hours and £1 for four, and that is what the tariff board carries.
Where parking is genuinely free
All three council car parks in Burntwood are free, with a 24-hour maximum stay (Lichfield District Council, Burntwood car parks):
- High Street, Chasetown (WS7 3JF), 34 spaces plus 4 blue badge bays, opposite the Crown Inn
- Queen Street, Chasetown (WS7 3XF), 40 spaces plus 2 blue badge bays, behind the One Stop
- Rugeley Road, Chase Terrace (WS7 1AH), around 13 spaces, opposite Chase Terrace Primary School
The 2026 order lists three more council car parks that are free of charge and that appear nowhere on the council’s website:
- Netherstowe car park, west side, Lichfield, off Netherstowe near Purcell Avenue
- Queen’s Drive car park, Chasetown, including its access road
- Wall village car park, on the north side of Watling Street, including the picnic area, bus stop and verges
Everywhere else in Burntwood is a private car park, so the free 24-hour rule does not travel.
On-street: no pay and display anywhere in the district
Staffordshire County Council, not the district, controls every road and every on-street bay in Lichfield district. The county publishes a list of its pay-and-display streets, and it covers Burton, Stafford and Newcastle only (Staffordshire County Council, on-street pay and display locations). There is no on-street pay and display in Lichfield, Burntwood or any village in the district. On-street here is free, limited-waiting or permit-only.
Where a permit parking scheme exists, the county issues the permits. Its published figures are unusually vague: the annual charge for a permit is “about £56”, and there is a one-off joining fee per household that is “normally about £50”, though the county says it can be higher (Staffordshire County Council, permit information).
Three exceptions to the price are worth knowing:
- a permit for a blue badge holder is free
- a permit for an authorised carer is free
- a senior citizen’s permit gets 50% off
Each household normally gets one permit, with a second only where road space allows. Schemes usually run 8am to 6pm, Monday to Saturday. Permits are not transferable between schemes, and there are no part-year refunds.
Long stay permits: £500 a year
If you park in the city most days, the council sells season tickets for its long stay car parks (Lichfield District Council, buy a parking permit):
| Permit | Cost |
|---|---|
| One month | £50 |
| Three months | £150 |
| Six months | £250 |
| One year | £500 |
The council puts the annual permit at £1.92 a day if you park five days a week, or £1.36 a day if you park seven. Against the £4.30 daily rate, a year of five-day commuting costs roughly £1,120 without a permit.
The permit is interchangeable but not universal. The 2026 order names the car parks it is valid in: University, Birmingham Road, Lombard lower deck, The Friary multi storey, Redcourt and Greenhill. The bus station record adds that long stay permits are valid there too. It is not valid in any short stay car park.
The Friary multi storey also has designated residents’ parking bays, free with a valid residents’ permit for that car park. Nothing else works in them: the order states that blue badges and every other type of permit are not valid in those spaces.
Blue badge parking
In council car parks, blue badge holders park free in the marked disabled bays. They may also park free in any other bay when the disabled bays are full, or where a car park has none. The badge has to be displayed, and it does not cover access roads, loading areas or hatching.
Blue badge bay counts in the city are: Bird Street 26, Friary multi storey 21, Lombard Street upper deck 18, Bus Station 8, University East 6, Redcourt 4, District Council House 3, Sandford Street 2 and Greenhough Road 2. Friary Inner, Greenhill and University West have none.
Because The Friary multi storey uses number plate recognition rather than tickets, blue badge holders need to register with the council for the exemption to apply.
Blue badges themselves are issued by Staffordshire County Council. The district council’s page sets out the eligibility routes, which include being registered severely sight impaired, terminal illness, the higher rate mobility component of DLA, and 8 points or more under the PIP “moving around” descriptor (Lichfield District Council, apply for a blue badge).
Station parking
Neither railway station car park is run by the council. Both are operated by SABA UK and priced through West Midlands Railway.
| Car park | Spaces | Off-peak | Day | Week | Month | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lichfield City station | 53 | £4.00 | £5.90 | £19.80 | £57.20 | £457.60 |
| Lichfield Trent Valley station | 212 | £8.50 | £11.00 | £37.00 | £108.10 | £864.30 |
| Birmingham Road, council, next to City | 34 | n/a | £4.30 | n/a | n/a | £500 permit |
Sources: West Midlands Railway, Lichfield City and Lichfield Trent Valley.
At Lichfield City the arithmetic is close. The council’s Birmingham Road car park is £1.60 a day cheaper than the station’s own, but a full year of council permit costs £500 against SABA’s £457.60 annual season, so the station wins on an annual ticket and the council wins on a daily one. Birmingham Road has only 34 spaces.
Trent Valley is the London station and it is priced accordingly, at £11.00 a day and £864.30 a year for 212 spaces. It has two electric vehicle charge points and 20 unsheltered cycle stands. One quirk: if you park in the Old Burton Road car park next to platform 2 and want a two-day weekend ticket, you have to buy it from the ticket office or the machines in the main car park by platform 1, because the platform 2 machine cannot sell them.
Fines, electric charging and motorcycles
Enforcement in council car parks is carried out on the council’s behalf by SABA UK. Penalty charge notices come in two levels (Lichfield District Council, parking fines):
- £70, or £35 if paid within 14 days, for serious offences such as using a disabled bay without a valid blue badge
- £50, or £25 within 14 days, for offences such as not displaying a valid ticket
The prefix tells you who issued it. A reference beginning LF is a district council car park fine. One beginning GE is an on-street fine and belongs to Staffordshire County Council. The council also warns that it never issues penalties by email and never asks for payment on a third-party site.
Electric charging is at The Friary only: two bays served by two 22kW units, on a first come first served basis, at £0.49 per kWh. You still pay for the parking separately at the terminal before leaving. You need a Type 2 lead and a phone or browser to start the charge.
Motorcycles park free in the marked solo bays at The Friary, Bird Street and the Bus Station car park. Park a motorcycle in a car bay and you must buy and display a ticket like anyone else. Hatched areas are not permitted.
Payment across the estate is by pay and display, contactless card at some machines and PayByPhone using a location code. Bird Street is 59562, Birmingham Road 59563, Bunkers Hill 59564, Bus Station 59565, District Council House 59567, Friary Inner 59568, Greenhill 59569, Greenhough Road 59570, Lombard lower 59572, Lombard upper 59573, Redcourt 59575, Sandford Street 59576, Shaw Lane 59577, University East 59579 and University West 59580.
Frequently asked questions
Is parking free on a Sunday in Lichfield?
Not in the city centre. Every short stay and long stay council car park charges £2.10 for the whole of Sunday and the whole of a bank holiday. The three Beacon Park car parks, Shaw Lane, Bunkers Hill and Greenhough Road, are free on both. Burntwood’s three council car parks are free every day.
Where is the cheapest all-day parking in Lichfield?
Any long stay car park, at £4.30 for 24 hours. The Friary multi storey has by far the most space at 365 bays. Avoid Beacon Park for a full day, where the all-day rate is £10.
How long can I park free in Lichfield?
Thirty minutes in a short stay car park, and you must take a ticket from the machine to get it. Beyond that the first hour is £1.00.
Who issues parking fines in Lichfield?
SABA UK, on behalf of Lichfield District Council, in council car parks. Those references start with LF. On-street fines are Staffordshire County Council’s and start with GE.
Is there resident parking in Lichfield?
On-street permit schemes are run by Staffordshire County Council at about £56 a year plus a joining fee of about £50, free for blue badge holders and carers. The Friary multi storey also has designated residents’ bays, free with a residents’ permit for that car park only.
Sources
- Lichfield District Council, Off-Street Parking Places (Civil Enforcement and Consolidation) Order 2026, operative 1 April 2026, for every tariff, the days and hours of operation, the permit prices and the six free car parks.
- Lichfield District Council, Lichfield city car parks and the individual car park records for Bird Street, The Friary multi storey, Birmingham Road, Lombard Street, Bunkers Hill, Shaw Lane and Greenhough Road for space counts, blue badge bays, payment methods and PayByPhone codes.
- Lichfield District Council, Burntwood car parks for the three free car parks and their space counts.
- Lichfield District Council, buy a car park parking permit for the £50, £150, £250 and £500 season tickets.
- Lichfield District Council, parking fines for the £70 and £50 penalties, the discount period and the LF and GE prefixes.
- Lichfield District Council, electric car charging and motorcycle parking.
- Staffordshire County Council, on-street pay and display parking locations and permit parking scheme information.
- West Midlands Railway station pages for Lichfield City and Lichfield Trent Valley for the SABA car park spaces and charges.
Related: Lichfield bin collection days, council tax bands, roadworks and travel and train times to London. Tariffs change by statutory order. Check the board on the day. Checked 2 September 2026.
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