Roll up, roll up! Get your resident rate parking permit now!

Canterbury district residents can now apply for a new parking permit that offers a special resident parking rate at 13 city council car parks across the district.

Permit holders will receive a 20 per cent reduction on the cost of park and ride, bringing the price down to just £3.20 for the whole day – including at the newly-reopened Sturry Road route, as well as Wincheap and New Dover Road.

The reduced rate is awarded every time they use the service.

And they will also access a 10 per cent reduction at the following ANPR car parks in the district:

• Castle Row, Canterbury
• Longport, Canterbury
• Millers Field, Canterbury
• Riverside, Canterbury
• St Radigunds, Canterbury
• Castle Street multi-storey, Canterbury
• Station Road West multi-storey, Canterbury
• Middle Wall, Whitstable
• Neptune, Herne Bay
• William Street, Herne Bay

Residents with an existing city council parking permit account will need to log on to their account and activate the ‘residents permit’ category.

Those without an account will need to create one via the council’s website.

In both cases, proof of residency in the district will be required using two documents from a number of options, including a council tax bill, driving licence, home insurance, a blue badge and several more.

It will take between 15 mins and an hour for our systems to process the application and make the resident rate available on customers’ accounts.

On the park and ride service, customers who are not district residents can also benefit by using the service regularly.

Their fifth journey will be free of charge when they use it five times in any calendar month, again through the council’s ANPR parking account.

The council’s Cabinet member for parking, Cllr Alex Ricketts, said: “We are really pleased to offer our residents this special permit that reduces the cost of parking each and every time they use park and ride or park in one of the 10 other car parks included in our new scheme.

“In putting together the parking prices for this financial year, we wanted to support local people with how much they pay to park as much as we could.

“There’s a really decent saving to be had for permit holders at some of our most popular sites.

“We are always looking at ways to be innovative with our parking arrangements and will be keen to see how well this permit goes this year.

“We will then look to see how we can build on it in future years and continue to put residents first in everything we do.”

As well as the new residents’ permit and the reopening of Sturry Road Park and Ride, the council has also brought back three hours of free blue badge parking.

And also now in place are the new colour-coded car park bands, which have been introduced to help motorists plan their journey to avoid congestion and pay less.

Each car park has been given a band between one and five and drivers will pay the same rate for every car park in the same band to create a fairer and simpler parking system for residents and visitors.

A day in a band one car park is capped at £30, a day in a band two car park is capped at £20 and a day in a band three car park is capped at £15.

You can find out which car park is in which band here.

Published: 4 April 2024