South Cambridgeshire District Council owns no car parks and charges nothing. The costs sit at park and ride after 18 hours, and at four station car parks.

Search South Cambridgeshire District Council’s website for a car park tariff and you will find nothing. That is not an oversight. The district council does not operate a single car park, has no parking pages, and collects no parking income. Village car parks here are free, and most are looked after by parish councils or by the shop or pub they serve.

What that means in practice is that the parking decisions worth money to you are made by other organisations: Cambridgeshire County Council on the street and at the park and ride sites, and train operators at the stations. This page gathers what each of them actually charges, checked on 26 August 2026.

Park and ride: free for 18 hours, then it bites

Cambridge has five park and ride sites and two of them are inside South Cambridgeshire: Milton (CB24 6DQ, in Milton parish) and Babraham Road (CB22 3AB, in Great Shelford parish). Trumpington, Madingley Road and Newmarket Road sit in the city.

Parking is free for up to 18 hours. You pay only for the bus, and the county’s own pricing page puts the fares at:

  • £4.50 adult return to the city centre and back
  • £1 child return, when travelling with a fare-paying adult
  • £3.80 short hop return, Babraham Road to Addenbrooke’s or Newmarket Road to the Abbey Stadium on match days
  • £9.50 small group day ticket for up to three people, £14 for up to five
  • £14 a week for park and ride buses, £15 a week including Stagecoach city buses

Up to four children under five travel free with each paying adult. Concessionary pass holders whose pass was issued by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority travel free all day; other English scheme passes work after 9:30am on weekdays and all day at weekends.

The trap

The 18 hours is the bit that catches people out, and it catches out exactly the travellers least likely to be reading the small print: anyone leaving a car while they go away.

Length of stay Charge
Up to 18 hours Free
18 to 24 hours £10
24 to 48 hours £20
48 to 72 hours £30

You cannot pay on the way out. The charge has to be paid within the first hour of arrival, through RingGo or by phone using the code on the information board. The maximum stay is 72 hours. Return bus tickets are only valid on the day you buy them, so an overnight trip needs two singles at £3 each rather than a return.

Station car parks: from free to £12 a day

Six stations serve the district, and what they charge varies more than the distances between them. Two have no car park at all.

Station Spaces Operator Day rate
Whittlesford Parkway 348 Saba £12.00
Meldreth 43 APCOA £2.30
Shepreth 13 APCOA £2.00
Waterbeach 82 Cambridgeshire County Council No charge listed
Foxton 0 None No car park
Shelford 0 None No car park

Whittlesford Parkway is more than five times the price of Meldreth, eight miles away on the other line into Cambridge. Its full tariff, from Greater Anglia’s station page: £1.20 an hour, £9.00 off-peak, £12.00 a day, £7.40 on a Saturday or Sunday, £48 a week, £173 a month, £467 for three months and £1,680 a year. Twelve of its 348 spaces are accessible.

Meldreth’s APCOA tariff is £2.30 a day Monday to Sunday, £1.80 off-peak from 10am, £1.30 in the evening from 5pm, £6.60 a week, £26.20 a month, £102.70 a quarter and £231.20 a year. Daily tickets expire at 4am, and a 15p convenience fee is added to every tariff. The location code is 3040.

Shepreth is the newest change. Its 13 spaces were free until paid parking started on 30 March 2026. It is now £2.00 a day and £1.00 from 5pm on weekdays, plus the same 15p fee.

Blue badge holders park free at both APCOA sites, but Shepreth requires registering in advance through APCOA’s blue badge permit portal.

Waterbeach’s 82 spaces are run by Cambridgeshire County Council rather than a train operator, and no charge is listed against them on the National Rail station record. Four bays are accessible.

Foxton and Shelford have no station car park. National Rail records zero spaces at both. If you are aiming for a Cambridge to Royston train from either, you are parking on the street, in a village where the level crossing already takes the space.

On the street: enforcement arrived in 2024

Until recently, illegal parking in these villages was a police matter and effectively unenforced. That changed when the Department for Transport approved civil parking enforcement for South Cambridgeshire on 19 December 2023. Cambridgeshire County Council’s civil enforcement officers have been issuing tickets since 1 February 2024.

The penalties are set nationally:

  • £70 for the more serious contraventions, such as parking on yellow lines
  • £50 for lesser ones, such as overstaying in a limited waiting bay
  • both are halved if you pay within the discount period

The police keep their powers over dangerous parking and anything involving a moving vehicle. The council says it targets places where illegal parking hurts road safety and congestion most, which in this district means commuter parking and village shopping streets.

Resident permits: one scheme, one street

There is exactly one resident parking scheme in the whole of South Cambridgeshire, and its existence tells you something about the station tariffs above.

It covers Station Road East in Whittlesford, the street on the London-bound side of Whittlesford Parkway. Permits cost £73 a year and the restriction runs Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, according to the county council. Nowhere else in the district has one.

Blue badges

Blue badges are issued by Cambridgeshire County Council, not by the district. The application costs £10, taken during the online form and refunded if you turn out not to be eligible. The council says it can take up to four weeks to issue from the point all documents are in, and asks for up to three weeks more for delivery.

A badge is worth having beyond the obvious. It parks free at Meldreth and Shepreth stations, and free at Milton Country Park.

The one paid car park most people forget

Milton Country Park, on the northern edge of the district, is free to enter and charges for the car. Its tariff:

  • up to 1 hour £2
  • up to 2 hours £3.75
  • up to 4 hours £5
  • all day £7

Machines are contactless card only, and paying through the Evology app adds a 25p processing fee. Regulars can buy a permit at £40 for three months, £65 for six or £95 for twelve. Blue badge holders park free, but must register the registration number to avoid a fine.

What this page does not cover

Parking inside Cambridge is a separate system with its own tariffs, run by the city council and the county council, and it is not covered here. If you are driving into the city rather than around the villages, the park and ride figures above are the relevant ones.

We also have no verified tariff list for individual village car parks, because almost none of them charge and almost none publish anything. If your village car park has started charging, tell us and we will check it.

More local information

Sources