Parking in Market Harborough: Free Sundays, £7.50 All Day

Harborough District Council lists 37 car parks in its directory. Seventeen of them charge, 13 in Market Harborough and four in Lutterworth, and only between 7am and 6pm from Monday to Saturday. Nineteen are free at all times, and one is reserved for residents’ permits. Every council car park in the district is free on Sundays and on bank holidays.

Three things catch people out here.

• Market Harborough has no one-hour tariff. The cheapest stop in a short stay car park is £1.50 for up to two hours. Lutterworth has a £1 hour; Market Harborough does not.
• Overstaying in a short stay costs more than an all-day space. Over four hours in a Market Harborough short stay is £7.50. The same time in a long stay is £5.
• Symington’s Recreation Ground charges Monday to Friday only, not Saturday, and takes card or PayByPhone only. No cash.

Every figure below comes from Harborough District Council’s own car park records, read on 30 August 2026. On-street parking and residents’ permits are not the district council’s job: they belong to Leicestershire County Council.

What it costs

Source: Car parks in Harborough District, Harborough District Council.

Market Harborough car parks

Source: individual car park records in the council’s car parks directory.

A few details worth knowing:

• The 14 car parks above hold 1,384 pay and display spaces between them.
• The 67 free half-hour bays are the cheapest way to run an errand. Springfield Retail Park has 52 of them and The Commons has 15. No other Market Harborough car park has any.
• The Commons has seven parent and child bays. Springfield Retail Park has 14.
• Mill Hill is permit holders only from Monday to Friday. On Saturdays and public holidays it opens to everyone, and weekend access is through the Symington Way car park.
• Symington’s Recreation Ground has ten limited-wait bays on its access road offering two hours free, Monday to Saturday.
• Motor homes may use the long stay car parks, but must pay for every bay they cover.
• Springfield Retail Park is a council car park with a Sainsbury’s refund offer. You have to take a receipt at the machine, paper or electronic, and present it in store.

Free car parks

Five council car parks in Market Harborough are free at all times, and all of them are on the edge of the town centre rather than in it.

• Welland Park, Farndon Road, LE16 9NW
• Welland Park, Welland Road, LE16 9DN
• Leisure Centre, Northampton Road, LE16 9HL
• Northampton Road Sports Ground, LE16 9HL
• Northampton Road cemetery, LE16 9HF

Lutterworth has four: the Country Park at Brookfield Way, Dunley Way Football Club (LE17 4NP), Lutterworth Sports Centre on Coventry Road (LE17 4RB) and the Wycliffe Memorial Methodist Church car park on Bitteswell Road (LE17 4EL).

Every one of the district’s ten rural car parks is free at all times, in Lubenham, North Kilworth, Fleckney, Thurnby, Broughton Astley, Kibworth Beauchamp (two), Little Bowden (two) and Bushby.

Lutterworth car parks

Lutterworth’s three largest car parks between them offer 19 free half-hour bays across 122 spaces, a far better ratio than Market Harborough’s town centre manages.

Blue badge and disabled parking

Blue badge holders park free for three hours in every council car park, and must display a clock showing the time of arrival. Extra time beyond the three hours can be bought. (New car park payment machines)

The 14 Market Harborough car parks listed above have 77 marked blue badge bays between them, and the four Lutterworth pay and display car parks have ten.

A disabled parking space outside your own home is a Leicestershire County Council matter, as is the Blue Badge scheme itself. Both are applied for through leicestershire.gov.uk.

Motorcycles and electric vehicles

Motorcycles park free in every council-owned or operated bay in the district. The council lists marked motorcycle bays at eight car parks. (Motorcycle parking bays)

• Market Harborough: four at Symington Way, three at The Commons, three at Doddridge Road long stay, one at St Mary’s Road West
• Lutterworth: four at Chapel Street, one at Church Close
• Rural: one at Orchard Road in Broughton Astley, one at School Road in Kibworth

The individual car park records differ slightly from that list. St Mary’s Road West records two bays rather than one, and Station Road in Lutterworth records one bay that the motorcycle page does not mention at all.

Public electric vehicle charging is at Angel Street (eight bays), Doddridge Road long stay (six), St Mary’s Road West (six) and The Commons in Market Harborough, Station Road in Lutterworth (two), and at Orchard Road in Broughton Astley and School Road in Kibworth Beauchamp. The chargers are on the Pod Point and EB Charging networks. (Electric vehicle charging points)

Permits

Long stay permits are sold for eight car parks, and the number available in each is capped. Where demand exceeds supply the council allocates permits by drawing lots.

The council describes this as a 33 per cent discount on the £5 daily long stay charge. The permits available are 55 at Doddridge Road, 38 at Stamford Close, 15 at Springfield Street, 14 at St Mary’s Road East, 13 at Chapel Street in Lutterworth, 12 at Angel Street, ten at Symington’s Recreation Ground and eight at Church Close in Lutterworth. (Car park permits)

Stamford Close is different. It is for residents of Nithsdale Avenue only, costs £40 a year, and is now limited to one permit per household, though a single permit can carry two registrations.

Permits are electronic. Nothing needs to be displayed, and civil enforcement officers check registrations on handheld devices. A permit is valid only in the car park named on it and only on the days it covers. Outside those days the normal tariff applies, and holding a permit does not guarantee a space.

The machines changed, and so did the scam risk

New touchscreen machines went into every council car park from 24 November 2025, starting in Market Harborough and then Lutterworth. They followed a July 2025 consultation on the council’s car parking strategy in which residents backed cashless and ticketless options.

What that means in practice:

• You enter your registration, pick a duration and pay. No ticket is issued and nothing goes on the dashboard.
• Standard machines take contactless card and cash. Smaller yellow machines in the larger car parks take contactless card only, including Apple Pay and Google Pay.
• Receipts are printed on request at the cash and card machines, or obtained electronically by scanning an on-screen QR code. A printed receipt is for your records and should not be displayed.
• The machines never require payment by QR code. The council states this plainly, and it is the current fake-QR-code parking scam it is warning about.

PayByPhone still works, through the app, at paybyphone.co.uk or on 0330 400 7275. Extending a stay through the service costs an extra 10p. The council advises downloading the app only from the official App Store or Google Play, and typing the website address in directly.

Report a faulty machine on 01858 828282.

Fines

A penalty charge notice for parking without a valid permit is £70, reduced to £35 if paid within 14 days of the notice being placed on the vehicle. (Car park permit terms and conditions)

Fines themselves are paid and challenged through Leicestershire County Council, which handles civil parking enforcement across the county.

Station parking

Market Harborough station is on St Mary’s Road, LE16 7DT, and is managed by East Midlands Railway. National Rail records 472 parking spaces and 32 accessible spaces there, which is more than every council car park in the town centre put together. (National Rail)

Station car park charges are set by the train operator rather than the council, and we have not been able to verify a current tariff from a first-party source, so this page does not quote one. Check at the machine.

The council’s St Mary’s Road East and West car parks sit on the same road as the station and are cheaper for a full day at £5, though they are not station parking and are subject to the usual four-hour and over-four-hour tariffs.

Also useful

• Market Harborough roadworks and travel, including current bay suspensions
• Market Harborough bin days
• Market Harborough council tax bands for 2026/27