Parking in the New Forest: £1.50 an Hour in the Forest

Parking here is now two separate systems with two separate rulebooks, and the difference between them costs money.

Forestry England’s forest car parks started charging on Monday 20 April 2026. They were free for decades. New Forest District Council’s 50-odd town, village and coastal car parks have always charged, and their rules are the opposite of the forest’s on the one thing most people assume is settled: blue badges.

Every figure below was checked against the operators’ own pages on 1 September 2026.

The forest car parks: the change that caught people out

Forestry England now charges at 129 car parks across the New Forest. The tariff is flat across all of them:

• £1.50 for one hour
• £3 for two hours
• £5 for four hours
• £8 for over four hours

Three things about this are worth knowing before you park.

Blue badge holders are not exempt. Forestry England’s own wording is that charges “apply to all vehicles including blue badge holders”. Accessible bays exist, but they are not free. This is the single biggest trap in the New Forest, because in the district council’s car parks blue badge parking is free.

Only 16 of the 129 car parks have a payment machine. Everywhere else it is RingGo, by app, website or the phone line on 0203 046 0063. If there is no mobile signal where you are parked, you can pay up to midnight the following day. A ticket bought at one of the 16 machines is valid in other forest car parks for the time you paid for.

An annual membership is £96. Forestry England national membership covers parking at all 129 New Forest car parks, and nationwide, for £96 a year or £8 a month by direct debit. That is worth it from about 12 full-day visits.

Forestry England said in October 2025 that it gets less than 20% of its core funding from government, that material costs had risen by more than half in three years, and that the alternative to charging was closing car parks and trails.

Council car parks: the tariff is the same almost everywhere

New Forest District Council runs more than 50 car parks, with nearly 1,500 short stay spaces, over 4,500 long stay and over 250 disabled spaces. The town and village tariff is standard across the district:

Short stay bays cap at three hours, long stay at 20. We checked this against the individual pages for St Thomas Street in Lymington, Furlong in Ringwood, Lyndhurst, Westfield in Totton and Elm Avenue in New Milton, and the prices match at every one.

One oddity: the Elm Avenue page prints £3.38 for three hours in the short stay, where every other car park, and its own long stay column on the same page, says £3.85. It looks like a typo on the council’s page rather than a genuinely cheaper car park in New Milton.

The charging hours are the real trap

8am to 6pm, every day, including bank holidays. There is no free Sunday and no free bank holiday in the district’s town and village car parks. That is stated on the council’s town and village parking page and repeated on every individual car park page.

Coastal car parks charge until 10pm in summer

The council’s coastal car parks, which it calls amenity car parks, run to a different clock and a different, higher tariff.

• 1 April to 30 September: 6am to 10pm, every day including bank holidays
• 1 October to 31 March: 8am to 6pm, every day including bank holidays

A summer evening at Milford-on-Sea or Calshot is chargeable until 10pm. The summer tariff at Hurst Road East and Calshot is £1.55 for one hour, £4.35 for two, £5.40 for four, £6.95 for six and £10.80 for 20 hours. In winter the same car parks charge £1.55, £3.20, £4.35, £6.00 and £9.65.

Bath Road in Lymington is the exception and the most expensive. It allows stays up to 72 hours, and in summer costs £8.60 for six hours, £12.85 for 24, £19.30 for 48 and £25.75 for 72.

The coastal car parks are at Barton-on-Sea (Marine Drive, Marine Drive East and Marine Drive West), Calshot, Keyhaven, Lymington (Bath Road and Town Quay), and Milford-on-Sea (Hordle Cliff, Hurst Road East, Hurst Road West, Paddy’s Gap, Sturt Pond and Taddiford Gap).

Where you can still park free

Six council car parks charge nothing at all, each with a 20-hour limit:

Two more part-time freebies are worth knowing:

• Rumbridge Street, Totton is free on Saturdays and Sundays. Its 10 short stay spaces also give one hour free every day. The 122 long stay spaces charge Monday to Friday, bank holidays included.
• Town Hall car park, Lymington only opens at weekends and on bank holidays, with 171 long stay spaces.

The parking clock, which is the local bargain

The New Forest has a system most districts do not: a parking clock, a discounted permit that is transferable between vehicles and usable as often as you like. Anyone can buy one, resident or not.

The catch is in the short stay clock. At £47 for the year it is the obvious buy for anyone doing a weekly shop, but it is not valid in the coastal car parks at all. If you park at Milford-on-Sea or Barton-on-Sea, you need the £240 long stay clock.

Buy one by calling 02380 285000, online, at any council information office, at St Barbes museum on New Street in Lymington, or at the Welcome Store and Post Office on Brookley Road in Brockenhurst. Details are on the council’s pay for parking page.

RingGo works in every council car park and adds a 20p convenience charge per session.

Blue badges

In council car parks, parking is free for blue badge holders with a valid badge displayed. The council states this plainly. There are over 250 disabled bays across its car parks, from 16 at Lyndhurst and 18 at Furlong in Ringwood down to one or two at the smaller sites.

In Forestry England car parks, it is not. Badge holders pay the same tariff as everyone else.

Badges themselves are issued by Hampshire County Council, not the district.

Station parking

Brockenhurst is the district’s main interchange and its car park is run by APCOA, not the council or the train operator. It has 236 spaces, RingGo code 2016, and charges:

• £9.40 Monday to Friday daily rate
• £4.70 from 12pm off peak, or £1.60 an hour off peak
• £4.70 on Saturdays, and the same on Sundays and bank holidays
• £37.50 a week, £131.20 a month, £393.60 a quarter

At £9.40 a day, five days a week, the monthly season ticket pays for itself in three weeks.

If you get a ticket

A council penalty charge notice covers parking against the Off Street Parking Places Order 2005. The council does not publish the amount on its PCN page, but it does publish the timetable:

• Pay within 14 days and the charge is reduced by 50%
• Challenge in writing within 14 days, or the full charge applies if you lose
• After 28 days with no payment, the council gets your details from the DVLA and issues a notice to owner
• After a further 28 days, a charge certificate adds another 50%

Beyond that it goes to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, which is free and independent, and after that to the county court with enforcement agents’ costs on top.

The council also warns that it never texts anyone about a parking fine. Residents have been sent scam texts demanding payment.

More local information

• New Forest bin collection days
• New Forest council tax bands 2026/27
• Roadworks and travel
• Things to do in the New Forest