Every West Oxfordshire council car park is free, Witney's included. The catch is the maximum stay: Woolgate alone issued 895 penalty notices in 2024/25.
Every car park West Oxfordshire District Council owns is free, and the council has committed to keeping it that way. Its car parking strategy for 2025 to 2031 states plainly that “free parking will be retained in all public car parks controlled by the council”. There are 16 of them, six in Witney.
What you can be fined for is staying too long. In 2024/25 the council issued 895 penalty charge notices at Woolgate alone, more than at every other car park in the district put together. This page covers the six Witney car parks and their limits, the traps in the smaller towns, and the on-street rules, which are a different council’s job entirely.
Witney’s council car parks
| Car park | Spaces | Maximum stay | Open |
|---|---|---|---|
| Woolgate, OX28 6AR | 740 standard, 34 disabled, 12 EV, 12 parent and child, motorcycles | Short stay, limit not published online | Seven days |
| Marriotts Walk, OX28 6GW | 423 short stay, 150 long stay, 28 disabled, 5 parent and child | 4 hours on levels 1 to 6, 9 hours on levels 7 and 8 | Mon to Sat 7am to 1am, Sun 9am to 1am |
| Woodford Way, OX28 6GD | 246 standard, 1 disabled, 16 EV, 1 motorcycle bay | 12 hours | Seven days, including overnight |
| Windrush Leisure Centre, OX28 4YA | 84 standard, 5 disabled, 1 loading bay, motorcycles | Short stay, limit not published online | Seven days |
| Gordon Way, OX28 4EL | 50 standard | 12 hours | Seven days, including overnight |
| Burwell Drive, OX28 5LP | 40 standard, 2 disabled | 12 hours | Seven days, including overnight |
Source: West Oxfordshire District Council, where to park.
The gap in that table is real. The council’s page calls Woolgate and the Leisure Centre “short stay” without saying how short, so the signs on site are the only authority. Its own parking strategy adds one detail the public page does not: Woolgate’s G Zone was moved to a 12-hour stay, which the council credits with cutting overstaying there.
Marriotts Walk went the other way. Its limit rose from three hours to four at the owner’s request, and tickets there fell from 1,266 a year to 322.
Witney’s car parks are busiest between 11am and 1pm on a Saturday, and back below 85 per cent occupancy by 3pm.
Where the tickets are actually issued
| Car park | 2015/16 | 2024/25 |
|---|---|---|
| Woolgate, Witney | 1,212 | 895 |
| Marriotts Walk, Witney | 1,266 | 322 |
| Windrush Leisure Centre, Witney | 48 | 152 |
| Guildenford, Burford | 5 | 120 |
| Hensington Road, Woodstock | 14 | 89 |
| Albion Street and New Street, Chipping Norton | 108 | 88 |
| Burwell Drive, Langdale Gate and Woodford Way, Witney | 164 | 87 |
| Spendlove Centre, Charlbury | 27 | 43 |
| Alvescot Road and Black Bourton Road, Carterton | 22 | 30 |
| Back Lane, Eynsham | 9 | 25 |
| Riely Close, Long Hanborough | not recorded | 10 |
Source: Table 49, West Oxfordshire District Council car parking strategy 2025 to 2031.
Burford is the number to notice. Guildenford issued five tickets in 2015/16 and 120 in 2024/25, a twenty-four-fold rise in a car park with 161 spaces.
The rules that catch people out
- Enforcement runs 8am to 6pm, and the council says officers also carry out evening patrols on occasion.
- There is a ten-minute grace period in permitted parking areas, as the law requires. Some contraventions carry an instant ticket with no grace.
- A penalty charge notice is £50, or £70 for more serious contraventions, halved if you pay within 14 days.
- Ignore it and it doubles. After that a further 50 per cent is added and the debt is registered with the Traffic Enforcement Centre, where appeal rights are limited. Pay or appeal on the council’s parking fine page.
- Most tickets are not for overstaying. The council says the commonest reasons are parking outside the bay markings and misusing parent and child or disabled bays.
- Nothing over 3,500kg may use the car parks, and there is a height barrier at Marriotts Walk and Woodford Way.
The change that came in on 1 February 2026
A variation order made on 6 January 2026 and in force from 1 February 2026 rewrote the stay times at three car parks outside Witney. In each case the whole car park had been 12-hour parking. It is now split, and the short-stay half comes with a rule the old order did not have.
| Car park | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Guildenford, Burford | 161 bays, 12-hour maximum | 64 bays at 10 hours, 97 bays at 4 hours |
| Hensington Road, Woodstock | 101 bays, 12-hour maximum | 51 bays at 10 hours, 50 bays at 4 hours |
| Spendlove Centre, Charlbury | 26 bays at 12 hours, 7 bays at 1 hour | 17 bays at 10 hours, 16 bays at 3 hours |
Source: West Oxfordshire District Council, parking order bay allocation and the 2026 variation order.
The rule to know is the no-return. In all three short-stay areas the order sets “a no return of 1 hours between the hours of 8am to 6pm”. Leaving and coming back within the hour is a contravention even though you have paid nothing and the car park is free. Charlbury also lost its seven one-hour bays in the same order.
A second change is out for decision. The council proposed on 15 July 2026 to bring Kilkenny car park in Carterton into the parking order, with a six-hour maximum stay in any 12-hour period and signs banning camping and sleeping. Its statement of reasons says residents complained of camping, littering, barbecues, campervans and people sleeping there overnight. Objections closed on 5 August 2026.
The rest of the district
| Car park | Spaces | Maximum stay |
|---|---|---|
| Guildenford, Burford, OX18 4SE | 161, plus 3 disabled and 2 parent and child | 10 hours, or 4 hours where signed |
| New Street, Chipping Norton, OX7 5LJ | 121, plus 6 disabled, 5 parent and child, 12 EV | 12 hours |
| Albion Street, Chipping Norton, OX7 5BN | 51 | 12 hours |
| Hensington Road, Woodstock, OX20 1JQ | 101, plus 4 disabled and 12 EV | 10 hours, or 4 hours where signed |
| Black Bourton Road, Carterton, OX18 3DN | 56, plus 9 disabled and 12 EV | 12 hours |
| Alvescot Road, Carterton, OX18 3JH | 36, plus 2 disabled | 12 hours |
| Back Lane, Eynsham, OX29 4QP | 60, plus 5 disabled, 5 parent and child, 12 EV | 12 hours |
| Spendlove Centre, Charlbury, OX7 3PQ | 17 long stay and 16 short stay, plus 4 disabled | 10 hours, or 3 hours where signed |
| The Lane, Great Tew, OX7 4DB | 44 | 12 hours |
| Riely Close, Long Hanborough, OX29 8DJ | 8, plus 1 disabled | 12 hours |
The council’s own beat surveys found off-street parking running above the 85 per cent industry threshold in Woodstock, Burford, Charlbury and Chipping Norton, and in some central Witney car parks. Its strategy says Burford and Woodstock need more spaces than they have.
On-street parking is the county council’s
Enforcement of on-street parking transferred back to Oxfordshire County Council in April 2023. The district council has no say over yellow lines, permit bays or kerbside charges, and cannot cancel a ticket issued on the street.
West End in Witney is the town’s residents’ parking scheme. An order made on 10 August 2026 came into force on 17 August, and the county names West End specifically on its resident permit page. A permit costs £70 a year, one per resident and a maximum of two per property. We covered the scheme, and Witney Town Council’s objection to it, in a separate report.
Visitor permits are countywide and the terms are worth knowing:
- The first set of 25 is free, once every 12 months.
- A second set costs £31.50, and you must wait six months after the first.
- The second set is free if you are 70 or over.
- Each household is capped at 50 visitor permits a year, and no more can be bought once they are used.
Source: Oxfordshire County Council, visitor parking permits.
Resident permits are vehicle-specific and limited to cars up to 2m high, 5m long, 2m wide and 2,250kg. Apply through the county, not the district.
Blue badge, motorcycles and Shopmobility
Designated disabled bays in council car parks are free with no time limit for a valid badge holder, with the badge clearly displayed. There are 103 such bays across 13 of the 16 car parks.
The distinction that catches people is what happens outside those bays. The council’s strategy states that a blue badge holder may park in any space in its car parks, but in an ordinary bay “will need to follow the terms and conditions of length of stay”. The no-limit concession applies to the marked bays only. Blue badge holders do not need a residents’ permit for the county’s on-street bays.
Motorcycles park free and should use a designated bay where one exists, or any bay other than a disabled bay where one does not. Only Woodford Way, Woolgate and the Leisure Centre have marked motorcycle parking.
There are no motorhome spaces anywhere in the district’s car parks, and no overnight camping is allowed.
Shopmobility lends mobility scooters free from The ICE Centre, Langdale Hall, Market Square, OX28 6AB, 9.30am to 3.30pm Monday to Friday, on 01993 846240. Book ahead. Woolgate is the nearest car park.
Station parking
Witney has no railway station. It closed to passengers in 1962, so there is no station car park in the town and nothing to compare against the free town centre car parks.
The two railheads Witney commuters use are small. National Rail records 48 spaces at Hanborough and 158 at Charlbury. West Oxfordshire’s own strategy notes that Charlbury’s on-street parking problem is partly rail passengers avoiding the station car park charge or finding it full, and that Spendlove fills at peak times. We could not verify either station’s current tariff from a first-party source today, so this page does not quote one. Our trains and travel page compares the four railheads on journey time and season ticket price.
The district’s own Riely Close car park at Long Hanborough is a village car park with eight spaces, and is not the station car park.
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