CMK charges 7am to 6pm every day, Sundays included, and won't cancel a ticket for not knowing. Full purple, red and blue tariffs, plus permit costs.

Parking charges in Central Milton Keynes apply from 7am to 6pm every day of the week. Not Monday to Saturday. Every day. The only two days in the year when they do not apply are Christmas Day and Easter Sunday.

The council knows this catches people. On its own list of excuses it will not accept when you challenge a ticket, third from the top, is: “you did not realise that you had to pay for parking on a Sunday.”

Everything here comes from Milton Keynes City Council, its 2025 statutory notice of charges, the operators of the private car parks and National Rail, checked on 31 August 2026.

How CMK parking works

Milton Keynes has no conventional town-centre car park network. Central Milton Keynes has over 20,000 spaces, most of them laid out in bays along the grid streets, and they are colour coded by tariff. What you pay depends on the colour of the bay, not on which car park you are in.

Bay colour Tariff When charged
Purple Standard 7am to 6pm, Monday to Sunday
Red Premium 7am to 6pm, Monday to Sunday
Blue Long stay 24 hours, Monday to Sunday
Green Limited waiting, no charge Check the sign for the time limit

Some purple stretches start later, at 8.30am or at 9.15am, and a few carry a no-waiting ban before 9.15am. The tariff is the same; only the start time moves. Check the sign before you leave the car.

Pay at a terminal or through RingGo. The council’s CMK parking map colours every street, and is the only place the bay colours are actually plotted.

The full tariffs

These are the charges set by the council’s statutory notice of variation (NOT-055), in force since 31 March 2025 and unchanged for 2026/27.

Standard tariff, purple bays

Up to Charge Up to Charge
2 hours £2.00 7 hours £4.50
3 hours £2.50 8 hours £5.00
4 hours £3.00 9 hours £5.50
5 hours £3.50 10 hours £6.00
6 hours £4.00 11 hours £6.50

Then 50p for each further hour. Two hours is the minimum stay, so a ten-minute errand costs £2.00.

Premium tariff, red bays

Up to Charge Up to Charge
1 hour £2.50 7 hours £14.50
2 hours £4.50 8 hours £16.50
3 hours £6.50 9 hours £18.50
4 hours £8.50 10 hours £20.50
5 hours £10.50 11 hours £22.50
6 hours £12.50

Then £2 for each further hour. Red bays are the ones closest to the shopping centres.

Long stay, blue bays: £10 for 24 hours.

The arithmetic nobody points out

Charges in a purple bay stop at 6pm and the ladder tops out at £6.50 for up to 11 hours. That is the whole chargeable day. A blue long-stay bay costs £10.

So if you are in CMK from 8am to 6pm, a purple bay is £6.50 and a blue bay is £10. The long-stay bays are only worth it if you are leaving the car overnight or well into the evening, because the blue tariff runs 24 hours while the purple one does not.

The multi-storey car parks

The council runs one, at Elder Gate, between MK Central station and the Morrisons/Argos block. It has 700 spaces, a 2.1 metre height barrier, CCTV on every floor, 16 accessible spaces and 18 electric vehicle charging bays, and it costs £10 a day. The council describes it as open Monday to Friday, 6am to midnight, so it is not an option at the weekend (details).

The two big shopping centre car parks are privately run. The council says plainly it has no control over them.

centre:mk multi-storey, behind John Lewis on Marlborough Gate (MK9 3FP), 1,400 spaces and 80 disabled bays, open 6am to midnight daily. Charges apply 6am to 6pm, seven days a week, and parking is free after 6pm:

Duration Charge
Up to 2 hours £2.50
3 hours £3.50
4 hours £4.50
5 hours £5.50
6 hours £6.50
7 hours £7.50
8 hours £8.50
9 to 24 hours £15.00

There is a trap here that does not exist in council bays. At centre:mk, standard charges apply in the disabled bays, and they are ground floor, first come first served (centre:mk parking). In a council bay a Blue Badge parks free.

Midsummer Place has its own multi-storey of around 750 spaces, and the council’s map also marks large private car parks at The Place Retail Park and beside Morrisons and Sainsbury’s, two of which carry a three-hour maximum stay. Check the signs on arrival: these are not council tariffs.

Where parking is free

After 6pm anywhere in CMK. Purple and red bays stop charging at 6pm. Blue long-stay bays do not.

Motorcycles, in every dedicated motorcycle bay and in every pay and display bay. Not on yellow lines, and not in resident or disabled bays.

Outside Central Milton Keynes. The council’s charged parking is confined to CMK. The district centres are free, with time limits the council still enforces:

  • Olney: the Market Place gives three hours free from 8am to 6pm when no market is running, and one hour around the edges of it. The Cattle Market at Silver End, East Street by the rugby club and Fountain Court have no restrictions at all. Stanley Court by the Co-op is two hours and run by a private operator (Olney Town Council).
  • Stony Stratford: free throughout the centre. The town council publishes a parking map, and there are two EV charging points on Market Square.

Free does not mean unenforced. Milton Keynes City Council issues the penalty notices in Olney and Stony Stratford as much as it does in CMK.

Station parking

Three Milton Keynes stations have a paid car park, all run by SABA. The council’s own £10 Elder Gate multi-storey is two minutes’ walk from MK Central and undercuts the station car park on a weekday.

Station Spaces Daily Saturday Sunday Annual
Milton Keynes Central 549 £12.80 £6.30 £6.30 £1,374.80
Bletchley 492 £7.50 £5.50 £5.50 £869.60
Wolverton 123 £11.00 £8.00 £8.00 £864.30

Bletchley and Wolverton also have an off-peak rate, £5.50 and £8.00. Weekly and monthly tickets are sold at all three: MK Central is £46.20 a week or £165 a month, Bletchley £23.10 and £78.40, Wolverton £37.00 and £108.10.

Fenny Stratford has four spaces and they are free. Woburn Sands and Bow Brickhill have no station car park at all, though Woburn Sands has 12 cycle spaces and MK Central has 900.

Figures from the National Rail station pages for Milton Keynes Central, Bletchley and Wolverton.

Permits

Permits are virtual, take up to five working days, and are administered for the council by Imperial on 01604 625608. Buying one does not reserve you a space.

Permit Cost
Resident, one year £25
Resident, one month temporary £5
Resident visitor, one year £25
Employee (E1), five hours £2.00
Employee (E1), 24 hours £3.00
Employee (E1), one month £56.25
Employee (E1), one year £675
Commuter, one month £187.50
Commuter, one year £2,250

Carer permits let anyone making a house call as part of paid caring work use a council resident bay without a resident permit, for the length of the visit only.

Resident and visitor permit schemes exist in more places than most people realise. The council publishes separate guidance for Bletchley, Bradwell Common, Caldecotte, Campbell Park and Adelphi Street, Central Milton Keynes, Cumbria Close, Dawson Road, Emberton, Furzton, Loughton, Middleton and Broughton, Neath Hill, Newport Pagnell, The Canons and Leary Crescent, Oldbrook, Petersfield Green, Rowlands Close, Stony Stratford, Turnmill Avenue, Wavendon Gate and Woburn Sands (guidance notes).

Refunds: annual employee and commuter permits are refunded by whole months remaining. A resident or visitor permit gets 50% back only if more than six months are left on it.

Suspending a bay for building work or a removal van costs £15 per bay per day, and needs 10 days’ notice. A dispensation to park where you otherwise could not is also £15 a day.

Blue Badge

In Central Milton Keynes a Blue Badge holder parks free and for unlimited time in council pay and display bays and in reserved disabled bays, and for unlimited time in time-restricted bays. On double yellow lines the limit is three hours, and the clock must be set to your arrival time. The badge goes face up with the serial number, issuing authority and expiry date visible, and the photograph hidden (Blue Badge parking).

The disabled bays are marked in yellow on the council’s parking map. Remember that this concession is for council bays. It does not apply at centre:mk.

Penalty charge notices

Two bands, under the Traffic Management Act 2004:

  • Lower, £50, reduced to £25 within 14 days: overstaying, no valid ticket, an invalid permit, parking outside the bay markings.
  • Higher, £70, reduced to £35 within 14 days: yellow lines, a disabled bay without a badge, a permit bay without a permit, a suspended bay, footway parking, stopping on zig-zags outside a school.

If you do not pay, the Notice to Owner stage is £50, a Charge Certificate takes it to £75, and registering the debt at court makes it £83.

The council does allow three grace periods: five minutes to get a ticket from the machine, a ten minute overstay on a pay and display ticket, and a two minute observation period for loading and unloading.

Do not pay if you intend to appeal, because paying ends your right to. Challenge it at penalties.milton-keynes.gov.uk, and if the council rejects you within the first 14 days it must give you another 14 days at the discounted rate. After a formal rejection you can go to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, which is free and independent.

Milton Keynes does not clamp or tow for parking contraventions. Only unpaid debt passed to bailiffs, abandoned vehicles and untaxed vehicles get that treatment (PCN page).

What changed, and what it earns

The 31 March 2025 rise was the first change to CMK parking tariffs in almost a decade. The standard two-hour minimum went from £1.00 to £2.00 and the premium first hour from £2.00 to £2.50. Car share, hotel and conference permits were scrapped: car share applications had fallen nearly 90% in five years. The council’s argument was that £2 for two hours still undercut Northampton and Bedford at £2 an hour, and matched a £2 single bus fare into the city (council announcement, 26 March 2025).

One caution on the council’s own figures. Its parking news page says the price is “£1 for two hours in standard bays”. The statutory notice and the parking map both say £2.00 for the first two hours. The notice is the legally operative document.

The council has around 21,000 revenue-earning bays and takes roughly £12m a year from them. By law that income is ring-fenced for highways, transport and subsidising concessionary bus fares. We looked at where the 2025/26 surplus actually went in Milton Keynes parking surplus hit £12.8m.

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