Wokingham Parking: Free Overnight Would End Under Plan

Park in a Wokingham Borough Council car park after 10pm tonight and you pay nothing until 6am. A draft parking order now out for comment would end that. Under it, the £1.20 evening charge would run from 8pm right through to 8am, and the free overnight window would disappear from the rules altogether.

The prices themselves barely move. What moves is the clock.

Comments and objections close at 23:59 on Wednesday 9 September 2026.

What the council is proposing

The council published a Notice of Proposal on 6 August for a new Various Off-Street Borough Car Parks (Civil Parking Enforcement) Consolidation Order. It would revoke the 2023 order and its eight amendments and replace the lot with one document.

The Statement of Reasons says the aim is a single, up to date document that is easier to administer and enforce. Tucked inside the 87-page draft order are changes the council’s own announcements have not mentioned.

The main ones are:

• the charged day shifts from 6am to 10pm, to 8am to 8pm
• the £1.20 evening charge stretches from 6pm to 10pm, to 8pm to 8am
• the free overnight period, 10pm to 6am today, is deleted
• a new £2.50 all-day charge at Ashenbury Park in Woodley
• a new £10 all-day charge at the country parks for stays over four hours
• new fees to suspend a parking bay: £9.20 a day, £64.30 a week
• new school parking permits at £17.50 a term
• doctors’ parking permits scrapped

The clock, not the price

The hourly and daily tariffs in the draft are identical to the ones that came in on 1 July 2026 under Variation Notice No.8. In Wokingham town car parks that is £1.60 for an hour, £2.90 for two, £5.10 for four, £7.30 for six and £8 all day. Outside the town it is £1.30, £2.40, £4.50, £6.80 and £8.

The hours around them are redrawn.

Two hours move each way. Parking between 6pm and 8pm would cost the day rate rather than £1.20, while parking between 6am and 8am would cost £1.20 rather than the day rate. The change that has no offset is the overnight one.

Schedule 3 of the current order carries a line reading “Overnight Charge 10pm-6am: free vend ticket requires vehicle to be registered in car park”. Schedule 4 carries the same line for car parks outside the town. Neither line appears anywhere in the draft.

Ashenbury Park gets a tariff

Ashenbury Park in Woodley is added to the order for the first time, as drawing number 001A, with charges applying. The council said on 5 August that it is proposing £2.50 a day there to help fund the park’s upkeep, and that this is not a charge to enter the park.

Schedule 5 of the draft sets the terms: 15 minutes free or £2.50 for an all-day session, at any time, Monday to Sunday, with a maximum of 24 hours and no return within two hours. The same schedule brings Ashenbury inside the country park season tickets, which run at £95 for six months and £180 for 12 at the concessionary rate, and £140 and £260 at the standard rate.

The council finished a path improvement scheme at Ashenbury in August, creating a roughly one-mile circular route linking the park with Aldermoors Local Nature Reserve, Waingels Road and Beggars Hill Road.

Country parks: a new £10 band

The country park tariff has a step added to the top of it.

Charges at Dinton Pastures, California Country Park and the Aviation Museum car park were last set by Variation Notice No.7, which took effect on 1 April 2026. That notice prices an all-day stay of over four hours at £8.50.

The draft keeps £3 for an hour, £5.50 for two and £7 for three, then splits the top band. Up to four hours would stay at £8.50. Over four hours would become £10.

A family spending a long summer day at Dinton Pastures would pay £1.50 more.

Four smaller changes worth knowing

School permits. A new Schedule 8 creates a permit for parents, at £17.50 per school term, or £6 for 100 sessions for Ambleside Nursery only. It buys 30 minutes in the morning and 30 in the afternoon, Monday to Friday, booked online in advance. It does not apply at the country parks, the Aviation Museum, Laurel Park, or the Elms Walk and Alexandra Court service areas.

Suspension fees. Article 16 lets the council suspend a bay or grant a dispensation, and for the first time charges for it. Schedule 9 sets £9.20 a day per bay and £64.30 a week per bay. Builders, removal firms and anyone needing a bay held would pay it.

Doctors’ permits go. The 2023 order defines a doctor, a doctors’ parking permit, a permit holder and a doctors’ vehicle. The word “doctor” does not appear in the draft at all.

Cars have got wider. The maximum permitted vehicle length rises from 5.00 metres to 5.20 metres, which the Statement of Reasons attributes to “the dimensions of modern passenger vehicles”.

There is also a change that looks larger than it is. Winnersh Triangle Park and Ride is in the 2023 order as drawing 035 and is absent from the draft. It has not closed. It moved to a separate Park and Ride Parking Places Order that took effect on 25 August 2025, alongside Thames Valley and Coppid Beech.

One loose end in the drafting

The Notice of Proposal says the order introduces “a 15-minute free parking period, requiring motorists to obtain a free ticket or register their vehicle using the approved payment system”.

The draft’s own definition of a “ticket” lists free-vend periods at two car parks only: two hours at the Carnival Pool leisure hub, and 15 minutes at Dinton Pastures Activity Centre. Ashenbury’s 15 free minutes are set out in Schedule 5 but are not in that list. It is the sort of gap a consultation exists to catch.

What it means for you

If you leave a car overnight in a council car park, this is the change that affects you. Today you take a free ticket after 10pm and pay nothing. Under the draft you would pay £1.20, and the charge would start at 8pm rather than 10pm. Residents who already hold an overnight permit would see the covered hours change from 6pm to 8am, to 8pm to 8am, at the same price.

If you park early, you gain. A 7am arrival currently falls inside the day tariff and would fall inside the £1.20 evening charge instead.

If you use the country parks all day, budget £10 rather than £8.50. If you drive to Ashenbury Park, budget £2.50, or keep the visit under 15 minutes and take a free ticket.

Charges apply on bank holidays under both the current order and the draft. Our parking in Wokingham guide sets out the current tariffs, car park by car park, and our roadworks and travel page covers what is closed across the borough this week.

How to comment, and by when

Objections and comments must be in writing and must state the grounds they are made on. Send them to the Traffic Management Team, Wokingham Borough Council, Shute End, Wokingham, Berkshire RG40 1BN, or use the council’s engagement site at engage.wokingham.gov.uk.

The deadline is 23:59 on Wednesday 9 September 2026. The notice is signed by Chris Easton, Service Director Place and Growth. All the documents are on the council’s Traffic Regulation Orders page.