Four hours on Oxford Road costs £5.70 in Cedars or £22 in Grainges Yard, a few doors apart. Plus the free HillingdonFirst half hour and the bank holiday trap.
Uxbridge has two big multi-storeys and a small surface car park within a few hundred metres of each other on Oxford Road, and the price gap between them is enormous. Park for four hours in Cedars and it costs £5.70. Park for four hours in Grainges Yard, on the same road, and it costs £22.00. With a HillingdonFirst card the same two stays cost £3.40 and £13.20.
Everything below is Hillingdon Council’s current published tariff, taken from the council’s own car parks dataset and its on-street charges page. Every figure has two versions, because Hillingdon charges residents holding a HillingdonFirst card roughly half what it charges everyone else.
Cedars and Grainges, the two town centre multi-storeys
Both are on Oxford Road, both open 06:30 to 20:00 Monday to Saturday and bank holidays and 09:00 to 18:00 on Sunday, both charge on Sundays, and both have no set maximum stay. Cedars has 514 spaces including 34 for disabled drivers, and Grainges has 457 including 33. The tariff is identical.
| Stay | HillingdonFirst card | Everyone else |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 2 hours | £2.00 | £3.30 |
| Up to 3 hours | £2.70 | £4.50 |
| Up to 4 hours | £3.40 | £5.70 |
| Up to 5 hours | £3.80 | £6.30 |
| Up to 6 hours | £5.80 | £9.60 |
| Up to 8 hours | £9.10 | £15.10 |
| Over 8 hours | £13.10 | £21.80 |
| Sunday, all day | £2.50 | £4.20 |
The height limit in both is 1.8 metres, so a roof box or a high-top van will not get in. (Car park permits, Hillingdon Council)
The Grainges Yard trap
Grainges Yard is the small 33 space surface car park on Oxford Road, and it is metered in 15 minute steps with no free period. Its short stops are not unreasonable, but the longer you leave a car there the further the price runs away from the multi-storey next to it.
| Stay | Grainges Yard, card | Grainges Yard, no card | Cedars or Grainges, no card |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 hour | £2.80 | £4.70 | £3.30 (up to 2 hours) |
| 2 hours | £5.70 | £9.50 | £3.30 |
| 3 hours | £8.50 | £14.20 | £4.50 |
| 4 hours | £13.20 | £22.00 | £5.70 |
Maximum stay in Grainges Yard is four hours, and Sundays are free there, which is the reverse of the multi-storeys. If you are shopping for the afternoon, the multi-storey is the cheap option and the small car park is the expensive one.
The HillingdonFirst card is free, and it is the whole game
The card costs nothing. You can apply if you are 18 or over and live in the borough, or 17 and driving, and it doubles as your library card. (HillingdonFirst card, Hillingdon Council)
At a pay and display machine you press the yellow button, hold the card on the contactless symbol for up to four seconds until it authorises, then pay. Most machines then give cardholders 30 minutes free. Two conditions people fall foul of: you must take the free ticket at the time you park, and you cannot buy a second ticket afterwards to extend beyond that initial period. Forget the card and you pay the full rate. (On-street pay and display parking, Hillingdon Council)
The card also links to the PayByPhone app, and it is what gets a car into the tip at Harefield. See our bin collection days page for that.
On-street: Uxbridge town centre has no free half hour
This is the one genuine Uxbridge exception. Everywhere else in the borough the first 30 minutes on-street is free for cardholders and £1.30 for everyone else. In Uxbridge town centre there is no free period at all. It is 80p per 15 minutes for residents and £1.40 per 15 minutes for everyone else, and the maximum stay is two hours. (On-street parking charges, Hillingdon Council)
In West Drayton, Yiewsley, Hayes, Northwood, Northwood Hills, Eastcote, Ruislip and Ickenham the scale runs: up to 30 minutes free for residents and £1.30 without a card, up to an hour £1.50 or £2.50, up to 90 minutes £2.40 or £4.00, up to two hours £3.30 or £5.50, then 80p or £1.40 per 20 minutes to the maximum stay. The same scale applies at the local parades, including Hillingdon Circus, Hercies Road, Crescent Parade, Dellfield Parade and Merrimans Parade.
Operating hours are usually 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Saturday, though they vary by machine. Outside those hours, on Sundays and on bank holidays you can park in any pay and display bay for free.
What is actually free, and where it stops being free
Free, and easy to miss:
- Oak Grove Car Park, Eastcote HA4 8UD is free at all times, 61 spaces, with a 24 hour maximum stay. It is the only borough car park with no charge at all.
- Sundays are free at almost every surface car park, including Blyth Road in Hayes, Fairfield Road in Yiewsley, Brandville Road in West Drayton, Long Lane in Hillingdon, Community Close in Ickenham, Green Lane in Northwood and Rockingham Rec in Uxbridge.
- Ruislip Lido is free for up to three hours with a HillingdonFirst card in any season. Without one it is £9.80 for up to three hours between May and August, and £6.40 from September to April.
Where it stops:
- The leisure centre car parks charge on Sundays and bank holidays. That covers Hillingdon Sports and Leisure Centre at Gatting Way, Botwell Green in Hayes, Highgrove Pool in Ruislip and the Platinum Jubilee Leisure Centre in West Drayton.
- Cedars, Grainges and Ruislip Lido all charge on Sundays.
- The Civic Centre car park at Cricket Field Road, 367 spaces, opens on Saturdays only, 08:30 to 18:00. It is £3.20 for two hours with a card and £5.40 without, £4.90 or £8.10 for four hours, £5.60 or £9.40 over four hours. It is closed on Sunday.
Bank holidays: mostly free, with four zones that are not
On a bank holiday, Hillingdon suspends resident permit bays, business permit bays, on-street brown badge bays, pay and display bays and single yellow lines. The exception is what catches people: zones RL, RL2, RL3 and RL4 stay enforceable on bank holidays, both the permit bays and the single yellow lines. Everything else on-street stays fully operational. (Bank holiday parking, Hillingdon Council)
Only eight car parks open at all on a bank holiday: Hillingdon Sports and Leisure Complex, Cedars, Grainges, Ruislip Lido main, Willow Lawn, Highgrove Pool, Botwell Green and the Platinum Jubilee Leisure Centre. The surface car parks in the town centres are shut.
Permits
Resident permits are virtual now, so there is no paper disc to display. Prices are per vehicle and rise steeply with each extra car at the address.
| Resident permit | 3 months | 12 months |
|---|---|---|
| 1st vehicle | £23.10 | £92.40 |
| 2nd vehicle | £33.25 | £132.90 |
| 3rd vehicle | £44.80 | £179.10 |
| 4th vehicle | £54.90 | £219.50 |
| 5th vehicle | £65.00 | £259.90 |
The first 10 visitor vouchers at a property are free, issued with the first visitor permit. After that they are £15.60 per 10, and you can hold up to 50 sessions on one permit. Carers’ permits are free. Permit holder bays usually operate 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday, and outside those hours anyone can park in them. (Parking permits, Hillingdon Council)
Parking Management Scheme RL4 is run separately and every permit in it, including visitor sessions and carers’ permits, costs £0. Replacing a lost carer’s permit there costs £20.
Car park season tickets: £352 for three months, £748 for six and £1,507 for a year in Cedars or Grainges for residents, against £462, £1,023 and £1,837 without residency. A local permit for the surface car parks is £121 a quarter or £506 a year for residents, £143 and £594 otherwise. Numbers are capped per car park and a permit does not guarantee a space.
Blue badges, and Hillingdon’s brown badge
A Blue Badge parks free and with no time limit in council car parks, in pay and display bays, in disabled bays, in stop and shop bays and in resident permit bays. The single exception in the borough is zone RL2, where badge holders are limited to 30 minutes in resident and disabled bays. On single and double yellow lines the limit is three hours with a time clock displayed, where there are no loading restrictions. (Where you can park with a Blue Badge, Hillingdon Council)
Hillingdon also runs a Brown Badge, which is local and unusual. Residents aged over 65 can apply, it is free, and it gives access to dedicated bays sited near car park exits and pay and display machines. It is not a payment concession: brown badge holders still pay the tariff unless they are also displaying a Blue Badge. (Brown badges, Hillingdon Council)
Parking at the station
Uxbridge Underground station has no car park. Transport for London’s page for the station lists ticket halls, toilets, cash machines, boarding ramps, a waiting room, WiFi, gates and payphones among its facilities, and no parking. (Uxbridge Underground station, TfL)
In practice commuters use Cedars or Grainges, both on Oxford Road in the town centre, and the season ticket prices above are what a daily commute costs. A yearly Cedars permit at £1,507 for a resident works out cheaper than paying the over 8 hours rate of £13.10 more than about 115 times.
If you get a ticket
A penalty charge notice is £140 at the higher rate and £90 at the lower rate, with 50 per cent off if you pay within 14 days. Bus lane and minor moving traffic contraventions, such as a yellow box junction, are £160. (Parking tickets, Hillingdon Council)
One warning from the council itself: penalty charge notices are never issued by text message. Any text demanding payment for a PCN is a scam.
Also on Uxbridge News
Roadworks and travel has this month’s closures, bin collection days covers the recycling centre that needs the same HillingdonFirst card, and Hillingdon council tax bands has the full charge for every band this year.
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