Hyde Gardens is the dearest council car park at £3.90 an hour, and free all day Sunday. Three others are free with time limits. On-street is £7.05 for 2 hours.
Two hours in a central Eastbourne on-street bay costs £7.05. Two hours in the council’s Devonshire Park car park, a few minutes’ walk away, costs £2.10. The kerb outside the shop is more than three times the price of the car park round the corner, and nothing on either sign tells you that.
That gap is the single most useful thing to know about parking here, because Eastbourne’s kerbside is run by East Sussex County Council while the car parks are run by Eastbourne Borough Council. They set their prices separately and neither compares itself to the other.
Every figure on this page was taken from the two councils’ own published tariffs and checked on 24 August 2026.
Council car parks and what they charge
Eastbourne Borough Council groups its car parks into six tariff zones. The schedule below is the council’s own published table, labelled effective from 3 January 2025 and still the current one on its car parking page.
| Stay | Fishermans Green / Sovereign Park | Wish Tower | Beachy Head / Princes Park | Devonshire | Hyde Gardens | Redoubt |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Up to 30 mins | - | - | - | - | £2.00 | - |
| Up to 1 hour | £1.50 | £2.00 | £1.50 | - | £3.90 | £2.30 |
| Up to 2 hours | £2.30 | £3.10 | £3.00 | £2.10 | £5.80 | £3.70 |
| Up to 3 hours | - | £5.00 | - | - | - | - |
| Up to 4 hours | £4.40 | - | £4.40 | £3.80 | - | £5.10 |
| Over 4 hours | £6.30 | - | £6.30 | - | - | £7.30 |
| Up to 6 hours | - | £6.10 | - | - | - | - |
| Up to 8 hours | - | - | - | £7.10 | - | - |
| Up to 9 hours | - | £8.10 | - | - | - | - |
| Up to 12 hours | - | £15.00 | - | £9.50 | - | - |
| Maximum stay | 10 hours | 12 hours | 10 hours | 10 hours | 2 hours | 10 hours |
Which car park sits in which zone:
- Devonshire: Devonshire Park, College Road. 115 bays, 5 disabled, 6 electric vehicle bays. The cheapest short stay near the town centre and the theatres.
- Hyde Gardens: 72 bays, 9 disabled, 7 electric vehicle bays. Two-hour maximum with a two-hour no-return.
- Redoubt: 130 bays, 6 disabled, 6 electric vehicle bays.
- Fishermans Green / Sovereign Park: Fishermans Green (139 bays), Sovereign Park East (44) and Sovereign Park West (54).
- Beachy Head / Princes Park: Princes Park (149 bays) plus six Beachy Head car parks, Butts Brow and Warren Hill on the downs.
- Wish Tower: 22 bays, the smallest, with the longest 12-hour maximum.
Charging runs 8am to 8pm, Monday to Sunday, including bank holidays. Wish Tower, Hyde Gardens and Devonshire Park run to 10pm. Machines take coins, and RingGo takes cards by app or phone.
Where parking is free, and the traps
Eastbourne Borough Council lists three free off-street car parks. All three are small and all three have restrictions worth reading before you leave the car.
| Car park | Bays | Maximum stay | No return | Free when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gildredge Park | 22 | 4 hours | 2 hours | All week, 8am to 6pm |
| Church Street | 14 | 4 hours | 1 hour | Monday to Saturday |
| Ocklynge | 7 | 2 hours | 4 hours | Monday to Saturday, 8am to 6pm |
Two things to note. Ocklynge has a no-return period twice as long as its maximum stay, so a two-hour visit locks you out for the next four. And the council warns that penalty charges apply in its free car parks as well as its paid ones, so an overstay in a free bay still costs money.
The other free window is easy to miss because it is buried in a sentence rather than a table: Hyde Gardens is free on Sundays. It is the most expensive council car park in Eastbourne by the hour at £3.90, and on a Sunday it costs nothing.
On-street: the expensive option
On-street bays belong to East Sussex County Council, not the borough. Charging hours differ depending on where you are:
- Town centre, zones A, G and S: 8am to 6pm, Monday to Saturday
- Seafront, zone N, part of zone S and Wilmington Square: 8am to 6pm, Monday to Sunday
Parking controls apply on bank holidays. Charges do not apply on 25 December, 26 December or 1 January.
| Stay | 2 hr max (central) | 2 hr max | 4 hr max | Hardwick Road | Seafront, summer | Seafront, winter |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 minutes | 55p | 55p | 55p | 55p | 55p | - |
| 30 minutes | £2.45 | £1.30 | £1.30 | £1.00 | £1.00 | - |
| 1 hour | £4.75 | £2.45 | £2.45 | £1.95 | £1.95 | 55p |
| 2 hours | £7.05 | £4.75 | £4.75 | £3.60 | £3.60 | £1.00 |
| 4 hours | - | - | £7.05 | £5.90 | £5.90 | £2.85 |
| 6 hours | - | - | - | £7.05 | £7.05 | £3.60 |
| All day | - | - | - | £9.35 | £9.35 | £9.35 |
The summer tariff runs 1 April to 31 October, the winter tariff 1 November to 31 March. Source: East Sussex County Council.
The seafront columns hide the sharpest quirk in Eastbourne’s parking. In winter an hour on the seafront costs 55p against £1.95 in summer, but a full day costs £9.35 in both seasons. In winter the all-day ticket is worth it only if you are staying more than about six hours; below that the hourly rate is far cheaper. In summer the crossover comes much sooner.
Two-hour central bays are the most expensive kerb in the town. Thirty minutes there costs £2.45, the same as a full hour in an ordinary two-hour bay a street away.
Permits
There are two separate permit systems, because there are two separate authorities.
Council car parks (Eastbourne Borough Council). Since 18 June 2025 season permits are bought through the RingGo app as long-duration “sessions”. They replaced the old Leisure Card. Discounts are 10% for buying quarterly and 15% for buying annually.
| Car parks | Monthly | Quarterly | Annual |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beachy Head and downland (six Beachy Head car parks, Warren Hill, Butts Brow) | - | - | £106 |
| Fisherman's Green and Sovereign Park | £606 | £580 | £550 |
| Princes Park | £606 | £580 | £550 |
| Redoubt | £924 | £884 | £840 |
| Wish Tower | £804 | £768 | £730 |
| Hyde Gardens | £1,536 | £1,468 | £1,400 |
The downland permit at £106 a year works out at 29p a day, and the council notes that it covers Butts Brow as well, “unfortunately this isn’t made clear in the app”. If you walk on the downs regularly it is the best-value parking in the borough by a wide margin.
On-street resident permits (East Sussex County Council). Priced by the CO2 emissions of your car, not by zone.
| Emissions band | First permit | Second permit |
|---|---|---|
| Standard, more than 185g/km | £115 | £154 |
| 185g/km or less | £102 | £144 |
| 150g/km or less | £91 | £132 |
| 120g/km or less | £67 | £107 |
| 100g/km or less | £19 | £60 |
You have to send proof of the emissions figure with the application. Without it you are charged the standard rate, and you cannot cancel and reapply at the lower price later. A household can hold up to two resident permits.
Visitor permits. Eastbourne households get a bigger allowance than any other town in the county: 150 scratch-card permits a year, or 300 if you hold a blue badge. They cost £1.50 each, or 75p each for blue badge holders, and are bought in books of ten. A permit is valid for the date scratched off and up to 10am the next morning. You apply online and collect from Eastbourne Library.
Blue badge parking
Blue badge holders park free of charge in any council-run pay and display car park in Eastbourne for a limited period. Most sites have marked disabled bays, and if those are full any bay can be used without charge. The council does not publish what the limited period is, so check the notice board at the site.
Two further points:
- Eastbourne residents with a blue badge can buy an on-street resident permit for £8, rather than the £19 to £115 that everyone else pays.
- Applications for a disabled bay outside your own home go to East Sussex County Council, not the borough.
Council disabled bay counts are highest at Hyde Gardens (9), Redoubt (6), Devonshire Park (5) and Princes Park (5).
Station and shopping centre parking
Neither of these belongs to the council, and both are priced differently again.
Eastbourne station, Commercial Road, BN21 3XE, is run by APCOA. It has 329 spaces, 13 of them disabled and 6 with electric vehicle charging. Blue badge holders park free once registered through APCOA’s portal or app. The tariff runs from £3.30 for an hour to £7.80 for a weekday day and £6.90 at weekends, with £2.50 from 5pm. Season tickets are £31.50 a week, £121.50 a month and £1,253.60 a year. A 15p convenience fee is added to each tariff and daily tickets expire at 4am.
The Beacon shopping centre is open 8am to midnight Monday to Saturday and 9am to midnight on Sunday, with a 1.8 metre height limit. Standard rates are £1.80 for an hour and £3.40 for two, rising to £12.50 for eight hours and £20 for 24. Evenings from 6pm are £1.50 and Sunday all day is £1.60. The lower ReFlex AutoPay rates knock roughly 10% off. It has 23 disabled spaces and 27 parent and child spaces.
For a Sunday in the town centre, the Beacon at £1.60 all day and Hyde Gardens at nothing are both cheaper than any on-street bay in the seafront zone, which charges seven days a week.
Motorhomes and height barriers
Motorhomes can park during the day at the downland car parks: Beachy Head, Butts Brow and Warren Hill. Overnight parking is not allowed anywhere.
Two-metre height barriers are fitted at Devonshire Park, Fishermans Green East, Princes Park, Redoubt, Southfields Road, Sovereign Park East and Sovereign Park West. Fisherman’s Green West has no barrier, but overnight parking is still banned.
Where to check next
- Eastbourne Borough Council car parking for tariffs, maps and permits
- East Sussex County Council on-street parking in Eastbourne for zones, hours and charges
- Eastbourne roadworks and travel for closures that shut a car park entrance or a route to one
- Eastbourne trains to London if the station car park is the plan
- Eastbourne bin collection days and council tax bands for the borough’s other everyday services
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