Wonderful on Tap

Carsington water is located a short distance from the Peak District National Park in Derbyshire.

Experience water

New car parking system at Carsington Water

Parking at Carsington

The car park at Carsington now has a new automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system. This is a system that will capture vehicle registration numbers on entry to the Carsington Visitor Centre and Millfield car parks.

You will not need to pay for your parking until you are ready to leave the car park, so no need to stress about how much time you’ll be enjoying the site! Simply park up, continue your visit and return to the payment terminals at the end of your stay. Your time of entry to the car park will be recorded, so you’ll just need to enter your vehicle registration number and the system will tell you how much to pay.

If you prefer, you can head home and pay online or via the Glide app available on iOS and Android. You’ll have 24 hours from your exit time to do this. We hope you’ll find this new system more up-to-date and convenient. As part of the upgrade, you’ll have a greater range of payment methods to choose from, including cash, card and contactless.

Please note that the Sheepwash car park is coin payment only.

Our new payment terminals will also be able to offer change, so no more heading to reception to change those notes!

Please do ensure that you pay for your parking. If you don’t, you will face a fine that will be issued via Group Nexus, our new car park managers.

The car park charges are as follows:

Sheepwash Car Park = £1.50 for two hours and £3 for the whole day - coin payment only
Millfields Car Park = £2.50 for two hours, £4 for the whole day
Visitor Centre Car Park = £3 for two hours, £5 for the whole day
Motorbikes = £1.50 all day

Just making a quick stop? You have 15 minutes free parking from when you arrive on site, so if you want to pop into the shop or drop something off, you won't need to worry about parking charges. Be sure to check your arrival time though, as once the 15 minutes are up, you'll need to pay for two hours.

Motorbikes

With our new system in place, motorcyclists will be required to pay for parking. Previously, we haven't charged motorbikes for parking as they had nowhere to display a ticket. With the new system, visitors will not be required to display tickets. Therefore, we see it as fair that motorbikes now pay, as they enjoy the same onsite benefits as other visitors. Please ensure that you pay, so as not to avoid facing our enforcement process.

Permit Holders

If you’re a regular visitor to our sites, you may be making the most of our annual car parking permits. We have annual parking permits for Carsington at £49 and multi-site parking permits at £60. The multi-site parking permits will allow you to park at all of our other Severn Trent visitor sites. If you have a parking permit there will be no real change for you. When you visit Carsington, you'll still need to display your permit as you normally would. You can now request a call back to buy or renew your permit.

Parking permit call back

Other Vehicles

We know that there are a number of other groups and vehicles that may not need to pay for parking. It’s worth noting that you will not be charged if you are onsite for 15 minutes or less. If you need to be onsite longer, please call the Carsington reception on 0330 6780 701 or visit us on site. If you are a delivery driver, simply notify your recipient of your vehicle registration number and they’ll pass it to us to add to the free parking list. It’s important to do this, as you could otherwise face a parking charge notice.

Blue Badge Holders

If you are a Blue Badge holder, you have the choice to park at our sites for free. If you’d like to receive free parking, please head to reception to show your blue badge and enter you registration number into the console. Failure to do this, or entering incorrect registration details could result in penalty charge notice.

If you park at Millfields or Sheepwash car parks, or if you visit outside of the visitor centre’s opening hours you can call the Carsington reception on 0330 6780 701 to add your blue badge for a 24 hour period by providing the badge’s unique reference number and your car registration number.