Rugby roadworks and parking: £5 all day, or £10

Rugby sits inside a knot of trunk roads: the M6 clips the north of the borough at junctions 1 and 2, the M45 and M1 are minutes to the east, and the A5, A426, A428 and A45 all cross here. Add the freight terminal traffic on the county boundary and a single incident on any of them pushes lorries through the town.

This page carries the things that stay true between updates: which routes matter, what every town car park charges, and where to look when something is actually shut.

Where to check live

• Warwickshire County Council roadworks map at warwickshire.gov.uk/roadworksmap covers everything on borough and county roads, including utility works, with dates and traffic management for each.
• National Highways covers the motorways and trunk roads: the M6, M45, M1 and the A5. Local road closures do not appear there and motorway closures do not appear on the county map, so on a bad morning you need both.
• The county council also publishes a forward programme of resurfacing schemes by parish, which is the only place you can see a Rugby closure coming weeks ahead.

What is programmed on Rugby’s roads

From the county council’s own Rugby borough works programme, checked this week. These are resurfacing schemes with a scheduled start date, not utility works:

Two more are listed without a firm date: Coventry Road (A4071) at Cawston, shown as ongoing, and Daventry Road (A45) at Dunchurch, shown as still to be arranged. Castle Mound Way was programmed for 27 July 2026 and Leicester Road and Rugby Road at Harborough Magna are both marked complete.

The A426 Leicester Road entry matters most. Four separate dates across late September and early October on the main northern approach into town, the same road that feeds M6 junction 1, is the closest thing Rugby has to a scheduled month of disruption this autumn. Check the county map for the traffic management on each date before you plan around it.

The junction the town has been arguing about

The A426/A4071 Avon Mill and Hunters Lane scheme is the one everyone means when they talk about Rugby congestion. The county council’s proposal would enlarge the Avon Mill roundabout, widen every entry to three lanes, replace the Hunters Lane T-junction with a roundabout, link the two with a short dual carriageway and a new bridge over the River Avon, and add a cycle route from the A426 Leicester Road to Wood Street. The stated aim is to stop traffic rat-running through Mill Road tunnel and Murray Road.

Where it has got to is the honest part. The council’s public engagement opened on 8 February 2024 and closed on 20 March 2024. Its published next step was to apply for planning permission, and its published expectation at that point was that “construction could start by Spring/Summer 2025”, with the caveat that the start date depended on finalising the design and securing funding. That window has passed and we can find no newer date on the council’s own scheme page. So: the scheme is live, it is not built, and nobody should plan a journey around it yet.

Every town car park, and what it costs

Rugby Borough Council runs ten car parks in the town centre. They fall into two very different groups, and the difference is worth £5 a day.

The full tariffs, from the council’s own car park pages:

Charges apply 8am to 7pm Monday to Saturday, with Sunday charging at John Barford, Chestnut Field, Little Church Street, North Street and the Town Hall between 10am and 5pm. Payment is by cash, card or RingGo.

Three practical points that follow from the table:

• If you are parking all day, use John Barford or Westway. John Barford is the big one at 411 spaces, off James Street and Railway Terrace, and it is the closest large car park to the station. At £5 it is half the price of Railway Terrace next door.
• Saturday is the cheap day at Newbold Road, £3 for a long stay against £10 the rest of the week, and it has 209 spaces.
• Sunday is free at Gas Street, Newbold Road, Railway Terrace, Westway and Old Market Place, and £1 all day at the rest.

Season tickets are available at four of them: £400 a year at John Barford or Westway, and £615 a year at Railway Terrace or Gas Street. Quarterly and half yearly options exist at £120 and £215, or £180 and £325, on the same split. Allow up to ten working days for one to be issued.

Parking at the station

Rugby station has 701 spaces, 15 of them accessible bays, and is managed by Avanti West Coast. If it is full or the price does not suit, John Barford is a short walk away at £5 for eleven hours, or £400 for the year. Journey times and season ticket prices for the trains themselves are on our Rugby train times page.

Out of town: the Draycote closure

If your travel plans include the reservoir, note that Severn Trent has closed the circular route at Draycote Water while it upgrades the dams. You can still walk, run or cycle part of the route, but there is no way through the construction area, so it is an out-and-back rather than a loop. Severn Trent expects the route to reopen in autumn 2026, with all dam works finished by late 2026. Parking has been cut to £3.50 all day while the works run.

What changes next

Rugby Borough Council’s Cabinet approved a ten-year town centre delivery plan on 3 August 2026, branded Rugby Revitalised. Among other things it covers route improvements between the Clock Tower and Old Market Place, a new public event space, and work on St Andrew’s Church and Gardens and the outdoor market. None of that has a start date attached yet, and the council itself notes that delivery passes to a new unitary authority in April 2028. Expect town centre street works to follow, and expect them to be announced piecemeal.

For anything happening this week, the county council’s roadworks map remains the only complete source. We check it, and the borough’s own notices, when we write up disruption on our news pages.