Every council car park in Crowborough is free, including 130 long-stay bays at Croft Road. The traps: no return within three hours, and a £70 excess charge.

Parking in Crowborough is free. Not cheap, not discounted for residents: free, in all four of the council’s car parks, including 130 bays where you can leave a car for 23 hours.

That is unusual enough that people assume there must be a catch, and there is one. The bays are sorted into classes with time limits, the limits are enforced, and the penalty is £70. Wealden District Council’s own wording is blunt: “Even though the car park is free of charge there are still certain rules in place.”

All figures below were checked against Wealden District Council, East Sussex County Council and APCOA on 31 August 2026.

The four council car parks in Crowborough

Car park Postcode Bays Longest stay
Croft Road TN6 1DR 216 short stay, 130 long stay, 6 disabled, 6 EV (7kW), 2 EV (50kW), 4 parent, 2 motorbike 23 hours
Jarvis Brook TN6 2EG 19 short stay, 36 long stay, 2 disabled 23 hours
Pilmer Road TN6 2UD 17 long stay, 1 disabled long stay 23 hours
New Road TN6 2QG 25 short stay, 1 disabled 3 hours

Croft Road is the big one, sitting next to the community centre and the library, and it is the only Crowborough car park with rapid EV charging. Jarvis Brook is the council car park the directory lists as serving the railway station. Pilmer Road is long stay only, so there is no three-hour section to get caught in.

There is a fifth car park in the council’s directory: the 82-space Waitrose car park at TN6 1DL, three-hour bays, with a height restriction. The council enforces it but Waitrose owns it, so the store’s own conditions apply on top.

Full bay counts and facilities for every car park in the district are in the council’s car park directory.

What actually gets you fined

An Excess Charge Notice is £70, reduced to £35 if you pay within 14 days. After 14 days it goes back to £70. Wealden issues them for five things, set out on its parking FAQs:

  • not parking wholly within a bay
  • parking in the wrong class of bay, such as a disabled or parent bay
  • staying longer than the maximum for that car park
  • returning to the same car park within three hours of leaving
  • at the pay and display sites, no valid ticket displayed

The third and fourth are the ones that catch regular users. There is a 10-minute grace period on the time limit and nothing beyond it. And the no-return rule is stricter than most people expect: leave Croft Road at 11am and you cannot legally park there again until 2pm.

You also cannot extend a stay by moving. The council spells this out: if a car park has both three-hour and 23-hour sections, you may not shift from one to the other. “You must leave the car park in its entirety and not just that time limited area.”

Not every Wealden car park has cameras. Where there are none, Community Officers walk the site through the day, and they can issue an ECN for a badly parked car as readily as an overstaying one.

Where charges do apply

Two car parks in the whole district charge, and both are a long way south of Crowborough:

  • The Willows, Alfriston: £2.50 for an hour, £3.50 for two, £4.00 for three, £4.50 for four, £8.50 all day. Coaches are £6.00 up to two hours, £10.00 to three, £12.00 to four, then £2.00 an hour.
  • Sea Road, Pevensey Bay: £5 for up to four hours, £6.50 all day, charged only from 1 March to 30 September.

The Pevensey Bay page carries a warning worth repeating, because it is the exception to the usual rule: “Charges apply to all users including disabled badge holders.”

The Dene at Alfriston is free but runs a permit scheme limited to residents and local businesses.

Blue badges

A Blue Badge does not buy you free parking in a Wealden car park. The council says the scheme “does not provide for statutory concessions in Car Parks”. Three rules follow from that:

  • badge holders pay the same as everyone else at the two pay and display car parks
  • you must use the marked disabled bays
  • you must not park on yellow lines inside a car park, even with a badge displayed

Note also that most disabled bays in the district are short stay. Crowborough has six three-hour disabled bays at Croft Road, two at Jarvis Brook, one at New Road, and a single long-stay disabled bay at Pilmer Road. If you need to leave a car all day, Pilmer Road is the one.

Blue Badges themselves are issued by East Sussex County Council, not Wealden.

Station parking, and the £6.60 gap

Crowborough station is at Jarvis Brook, TN6 2JR. Its car park is run by APCOA, has 143 spaces including five accessible bays, is open 24 hours and has CCTV.

Ticket Price
Daily, Monday to Friday £6.60
Evening from 5pm, Monday to Friday £3.40
Daily, Saturday and Sunday £3.20
Weekly £25.40
Monthly £90.70
Quarterly £263.50
Annual £834.50

Daily tickets expire at 4am and a 15p convenience fee is added to every tariff, according to APCOA’s page for the station. Blue Badge holders park free, but must register the vehicle with APCOA first. There are four CTEK chargers at 65p per kWh.

The council’s Jarvis Brook car park is a short walk away, free, and has 36 long-stay bays. Its 23-hour limit covers a normal commuting day. That gap, £6.60 against nothing, is the single most useful thing on this page, and neither the council nor the train operator has any reason to point it out.

Uckfield, down the A26, works differently. Luxford Field and Regency Close both use ANPR, so the ticket arrives by post rather than on the windscreen. Luxford Field’s 10-hour section is enforced 24 hours a day, seven days a week, while its three-hour section is enforced Monday to Saturday, 8am to 6pm only.

On-street parking is not the council’s problem

This is the part that surprises people who have moved from elsewhere in the county. Parking on the highway in Wealden has never been decriminalised.

East Sussex County Council states it plainly on its Wealden parking page: “Parking in Wealden has not been decriminalised, this means that we cannot carry out any on street enforcement in this area. Enforcement of the existing on street controls is the responsibility of the Police.”

What follows from that:

  • there is no council civil enforcement officer issuing tickets on Crowborough High Street
  • there are no resident or visitor parking permits for on-street bays in the district
  • a yellow line is still an offence, but it is a police matter, not a council one
  • to ask for a restriction to be reviewed, you go to East Sussex Highways on 0345 60 80 193

Wealden’s own page says the same thing from the other side: “Wealden District Council do not manage parking on the Highway.”

Electric vehicle charging

Wealden has been fitting Connected Kerb points across its car parks since March 2023. In Crowborough they are all at Croft Road: six 7kW bays and two 50kW bays. Faults go to Connected Kerb on 0800 0291 696, not to the council.

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