Mid Sussex council car parks cost £1.20 to £1.40 an hour and nothing after 6pm. Sunday is about £1 all day, and Burgess Hill's Martlets closed in March 2026.
Mid Sussex District Council charges for parking in three towns only. An hour costs £1.20 in Burgess Hill, £1.30 in Haywards Heath and £1.40 in East Grinstead, and nothing at all after 6pm.
Everything else in the district is either free, or needs a £1 cardboard disc from a shop. There is no resident parking scheme in Burgess Hill or Haywards Heath at all. And Burgess Hill lost a whole multi-storey car park this year, which the council’s parking pages do not mention.
What it costs
Charges apply 8am to 6pm Monday to Saturday, and 9am to 5pm on Sundays, bank and public holidays. Outside those hours parking is free.
| Stay | Burgess Hill | Haywards Heath | East Grinstead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Up to 1 hour | £1.20 | £1.30 | £1.40 |
| 1 to 2 hours | £1.70 | £2.00 | £2.20 |
| 2 to 3 hours | £2.70 | £2.90 | £3.10 |
| 3 to 4 hours, long stay | £3.90 | £4.20 | £4.40 |
| 3 to 4 hours, short stay | £5.30 | £5.60 | £6.00 |
| Over 4 hours, long stay | £5.30 | £5.50 | £5.70 |
| Over 4 hours, short stay | £7.60 | £8.10 | £8.50 |
| Sunday or bank holiday, all day, long stay | £1.10 | £1.10 | £1.00 |
| Sunday or bank holiday, all day, short stay | £1.10 | £1.10 | £1.10 |
(Parking, tariffs last updated 15 May 2026, rechecked 26 August 2026)
The trap is the short stay bands. Up to three hours, a short stay and a long stay car park in the same town cost exactly the same. Past three hours they split, and an all-day stay in a short stay car park costs £2.30 to £2.80 more than the same stay in a long stay one a few minutes away. Check the sign at the entrance before you pay, not the tariff you remember.
Cyprus Road in Burgess Hill makes that worse than it sounds, because it is one car park with both tariffs in it: 92 long stay spaces and 210 short stay ones. (Burgess Hill Parking Study, June 2026)
Which car parks are long stay
The council does not publish a list. But it only sells season tickets for its long stay car parks, and that list names them:
- Burgess Hill: Queens Crescent, Station Road, Cyprus Road
- Haywards Heath: Boltro Road, Franklynn Road, Muster Green, St Wilfrids, Lower St Wilfrids, Heath Road
- East Grinstead: Vicarage, Railway Approach, Norton House
The council’s own page contradicts itself on Haywards Heath. Its list of locations names Boltro Road but not Heath Road or Lower St Wilfrids, while its price tables name Heath Road and Lower St Wilfrids but not Boltro Road. All six are above, because all six appear somewhere on that page. (Car Park Season Tickets)
What is free, and the catches
- After 6pm, everywhere. The council decided on 29 April 2026 to amend its off-street parking order and remove the 6pm to 8pm charges. Its tariff page, updated a fortnight later, now ends charging at 6pm. (Decision, 29 April 2026)
- Sunday is not free. It is about £1 for the whole day, which is cheap, but a ticket is still needed between 9am and 5pm. That applies on bank holidays too.
- The village car parks are not free either. Cuckfield, Hassocks and Hurstpierpoint use parking discs, and the disc costs £1.00 from a shop signposted in the car park. You set it to your arrival time.
- The leisure centre car parks are free, but you have to register. At the Dolphin in Haywards Heath and the Kings Centre in East Grinstead there is a touchscreen inside the building where you type your registration. Miss it and you are parked without authority.
| Disc or touchscreen car park | Maximum stay |
|---|---|
| Broad Street, Cuckfield | 2, 4 or 23 hours, no return within 1 hour |
| Orion, Hassocks | 3 hours, no return within 1 hour |
| Trinity, Hurstpierpoint | 3 or 23 hours, no return within 1 hour |
| Dolphin Leisure Centre, Haywards Heath | 3 hours, no return within 2 hours |
| Kings Leisure Centre, East Grinstead | 3 hours, no return within 2 hours |
Eleven council car parks have electric vehicle chargers. The council says those bays are free of charge after 6pm:
- East Grinstead: Chequer Mead, Norton House, Queensway, Vicarage
- Burgess Hill: Cyprus Road, Station Road
- Haywards Heath: Franklynn Road, Hazelgrove
- Villages: Denmans Lane in Lindfield, Orion in Hassocks, Trinity Road in Hurstpierpoint
There is still a charge for the electricity, and the normal parking rules apply. (Electric Charging Points)
Burgess Hill: the shops’ car parks are empty, the station’s are full
The council commissioned a count of every car in Burgess Hill’s main car parks across a week in February 2026, and published it in June as evidence to the District Plan examination. It is the clearest picture anyone has of where the spaces actually are.
The split is stark. Two railway car parks and one small council one are at or over capacity, while the large council car parks in the town centre never got past about 60%.
- Station East, 62 spaces: every space taken at 9am on the Thursday, and again at 4pm.
- Station West, 73 spaces: 99% at midday Thursday.
- Church Road, 52 spaces: 102% at midday on the Friday, meaning cars parked where there are no bays.
- Chanctonbury Road, on-street: 113% on the Friday.
- Market Place, 293 spaces: peaked at 60%.
- Cyprus Road, 302 spaces: the short stay half peaked at 63%, the long stay half at 52%.
- Queens Crescent, 205 spaces: peaked at 58%.
The consultants also found demand markedly lower on Fridays at the station, which they put down to home working.
So if you are shopping in Burgess Hill, Cyprus Road and Market Place almost always have room. If you are driving to the train, get there before nine or do not bother.
The Martlets multi-storey has gone
Burgess Hill’s Martlets multi-storey car park closed permanently on 31 March 2026. The council made an order that day which removed it from the off-street parking order altogether. It is called The Mid Sussex District Council (Off-Street Parking Places) Order 2006 (Amendment No.1) Order 2026, and the notice was published on 2 April 2026. (Public Notice Portal)
That took 165 spaces out of the town. On the February survey they were barely used: the Martlets never got above 10% occupied, and at its quietest had four cars in it. The town centre had the slack to absorb it, which is presumably the point.
If you have an old map or an old parking app entry pointing at it, delete it.
Season tickets
All season tickets are digital, run through MiPermit, and there is nothing to display in the car. The council says there is currently capacity in the long stay car parks and it is issuing them on a limited basis.
| Where | 4 weeks | 13 weeks | 52 weeks | Monthly flexible |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burgess Hill, 7 day | £99.00 | £215.00 | £858.00 | £50.00 |
| Burgess Hill, 5 day | £83.00 | £182.00 | £715.00 | |
| Haywards Heath: Franklynn Road, Heath Road, Lower St Wilfrids, 7 day | £108.00 | £234.00 | £936.00 | £54.00 |
| Haywards Heath: Muster Green and St Wilfrids, 7 day | £113.00 | £244.00 | £975.00 | £56.00 |
| East Grinstead: Railway Approach and Norton House, 7 day | £108.00 | £234.00 | £936.00 | £54.00 |
| East Grinstead: Vicarage, 7 day | £117.00 | £254.00 | £1,014.00 | £59.00 |
A five day ticket, Monday to Friday, is cheaper in every location: £715 a year in Burgess Hill against £858, and £845 for the Vicarage against £1,014.
Set against the daily rate, the sums are worth doing. An annual seven day ticket in Burgess Hill is £858 and an all-day stay there is £5.30, so the ticket pays for itself at about 162 days. (Car Park Season Tickets)
Resident permits: East Grinstead only
This is the single biggest thing to know about parking on the street here. Burgess Hill and Haywards Heath have no controlled parking zone and no resident permit scheme. The council’s permits exist only in East Grinstead.
There are two zones, and they work very differently:
- Zone A: restrictions apply Monday to Saturday, 9am to 5pm, excluding bank holidays.
- Zone B: restrictions apply Monday to Saturday, 10am to 11am and 2pm to 3pm only, excluding bank holidays. Two hours a day, and free the rest of the time.
| Permit | Zone A | Zone B |
|---|---|---|
| First permit, annual | £63 | £37 |
| Second permit, annual | £126 | £74 |
| First permit, annual, low emission | £48 | £28 |
| First permit, six months | £34 | £20 |
| Blue badge holder, first permit | Free | Free |
| Non-resident, annual | £380 | £230 |
| Visitor, 2 hours | £0.60 | £0.60 |
| Daily visitor | £2.40 | not available |
| Weekly visitor | £14.40 | not available |
Two warnings. Zone A is at capacity, and the council has stopped issuing new additional permits in it. First permits and existing second permits are not affected, but third permits will not be renewed. And residents of four private roads cannot buy a permit at all, because those roads are not in the legal order: Aspen Court, Fosters Place, St Leonards Park and White Lion Close.
Resident visitor permits are capped at twelve days per calendar month.
One figure on the council’s own permit page is plainly wrong. It prices a six month low emission non-resident permit in Zone B at £941, more than four times the £230 annual rate in the same table. Treat that cell as a typing error and check before paying. (Parking Permits, read 26 August 2026)
Blue badge
In the council’s own car parks a blue badge parks free of charge, and not only in a marked disabled bay. If the disabled bays are taken you may use an ordinary bay, still free. What does not change is the maximum stay: a three hour car park is still three hours with a badge in the window.
On the street, a badge lets you park:
- on yellow lines for three hours, with the parking clock displayed and set to your arrival time
- in a limited waiting bay for as long as you like, and the clock is not needed
It does not let you park:
- in a residents’ bay in the East Grinstead zone
- on zigzags
- where there is a loading ban, marked by chevrons on the kerb
- in bays reserved for buses, taxis or lorries
Badges themselves come from West Sussex County Council, not the district: 01243 777653. (Blue Badge Parking)
Station parking
Neither the district nor the county runs the station car parks. APCOA does, for the train operators.
Haywards Heath is the big one. APCOA lists 1,024 spaces, though National Rail publishes 1,069 for the station, so the two do not agree. Current tariffs:
| Charge | |
|---|---|
| Monday to Friday, daily | £12.90 |
| Evening, from 5pm Monday to Friday | £6.60 |
| Saturday and Sunday, daily | £7.40 |
| Weekly | £50.80 |
| Monthly | £187.60 |
| Annual | £1,730.00 |
A 15p convenience fee is added to all of those, and daily tickets expire at 4am. (APCOA, National Rail)
Note the comparison with the council. An annual APCOA ticket at Haywards Heath station is £1,730. An annual seven day council season ticket in the town’s long stay car parks is £936 or £975, depending on which one. That is the cheapest way to leave a car near Haywards Heath all day, if you can get one.
Burgess Hill station has two car parks, Station West with 73 spaces and Station East with 62, both run by APCOA for the railway. Both were effectively full on weekday mornings in the February survey.
There is no park and ride anywhere in Mid Sussex.
Paying, and penalties
Machines take cash and contactless. The council is also on MiPermit: text PARK and your registration to 61600, use the app, or call 0345 520 7007. Each car park has a six digit location code on the tariff board. MiPermit adds 10p per transaction, and another 10p if you want a text reminder before your time runs out. You can buy up to seven days ahead and extend without walking back to the car. (Cashless Parking)
If you get a penalty charge notice:
- Pay within 14 days and the charge is reduced.
- Challenge within the first 28 days. If you challenge inside the first 14 days the council may re-offer the discount for another 14, but it only does that once.
- If the council rejects your formal representation, the next step is the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, and its decision is final.
- There are no instalment plans. The council stopped them, and its stated reason is that the Traffic Management Act 2004 requires payment in full inside set timescales.
Also on this site
- Mid Sussex bin collection days: the three week black bin cycle, and why bank holidays change nothing here.
- Mid Sussex council tax bands: every parish, band A to H.
- Roadworks and travel: what is closed this week.
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