Gatwick Drop-Off Charge Explained

What £10 includes, and what the meter does next

Ten pounds covers entry and the first 10 minutes at the kerb. The clock starts when the camera reads your plate at the entrance to the forecourt, not when you pull up, so queueing traffic eats into the allowance before you have stopped.

Past 10 minutes the meter runs at £1 a minute. It keeps running to a maximum stay of 30 minutes, at which point the total reaches £30 and stops. Nothing beyond that is a bigger fee, because 30 minutes is the limit rather than a price band.

So a 12-minute stop costs £12 and a 25-minute stop costs £25. The pricing is linear and easy to predict, which is unusual among London airports and the main reason Gatwick rarely produces the nasty surprises Stansted does.

• Entry to the forecourt at either terminal
• Ten minutes from the moment the camera reads the plate
• A pound for each further minute, to a £30 ceiling

Two terminals, two charges

North and South are the detail that makes Gatwick different. They are not two wings of one building. They sit on opposite sides of the airfield, connected by a shuttle, and each has its own approach road and its own cameras.

Driving from one to the other means leaving one charged zone and entering another. The system reads that as two visits and bills accordingly, so a wrong turn costs £20 rather than £10 plus an apology.

Which terminal a flight uses is not something to guess. The airport decides which airlines use North and which use South, and those allocations change, so the booking confirmation is the only reliable source, not habit.

• North TerminalIts own access road off the A23 and its own camera line. Check your booking to see whether your flight uses it.
• South TerminalSeparate approach, separate charge. Sits directly above Gatwick Airport railway station.
• Inter-terminal shuttleFree, and the correct way to move between them. Driving across means paying a second entry fee.

The £100 penalty and the fortnight that cuts it to £60

Penalties at Gatwick are among the highest of any London airport. Failing to pay by the deadline turns the fee into a £100 Parking Charge Notice, issued to the registered keeper through DVLA records. Settle within 14 days and it drops to £60.

The £100 is ten times the fee, and that ratio is the point worth remembering. Nothing else about the transaction has that kind of downside, and it is triggered by forgetting rather than by any deliberate choice.

Overstaying the 30-minute maximum produces the same notice. Below that ceiling the meter simply charges you, so the two failure modes are distinct: pay late and you are penalised, stay too long and you are penalised, but stay 25 minutes and pay on time and you have simply bought 25 minutes.

Long Stay gives you two hours for nothing

Long Stay is the free route, and Gatwick is generous with it: two hours at no charge, against 30 minutes at Heathrow. A shuttle runs to the terminals in 10 to 12 minutes.

Two hours changes what the option is for. Thirty minutes is only ever enough for a goodbye at the kerb. Two hours covers waiting for a delayed arrival, which is the situation where forecourt charges become genuinely punitive.

The catch is the same as everywhere: the free window covers time in the car park, and the shuttle sits inside it. Budget roughly 25 minutes for the round trip on top of whatever you spend at the terminal.

Who is exempt

Exemptions follow the standard pattern. Emergency vehicles on active service, official airport traffic and two-wheeled vehicles are outside the scheme automatically, with nothing to arrange.

Blue Badge holders can claim a discount, and the registration has to be done in advance against the vehicle rather than shown on the day. A badge on the dashboard means nothing to a camera reading a plate.

Anyone travelling with a disabled passenger should confirm the current arrangement directly with the airport before travelling, because Blue Badge policy is the least consistent part of these schemes across the London airports and it has changed more than once.

Getting the terminal right before you leave home

Getting it right is a five-minute job done at home and a twenty-pound mistake made at the airport. The boarding pass names the terminal, and that is the only source worth trusting.

Habit is the usual culprit. Airlines move between North and South, sometimes seasonally, and a family that flew from South last summer will drive there again without checking. The approach roads split well before the terminals, so by the time the building is in view the decision has been made.

There is one useful safety net. If you realise before the split, the correction is free. After it, the only free way across is to park, take the shuttle, and walk your passenger over, which costs more time than the second £10 costs money.

• Check the terminal on the boarding pass, not from memory
• Note that the approach roads divide before either building
• Use the free shuttle rather than driving between terminals

Timing the run down the M23

Timing matters at Gatwick because the forecourt clock starts at the camera. Arrive during a peak and the queue to reach the kerb is inside your ten minutes before anyone opens a door.

The airport sits at junction 9A of the M23, roughly 30 miles from central London, and the approach is reliable outside the morning and evening peaks. It is the last half mile that varies, not the motorway.

For a departure the practical advice is to arrive outside 06:00 to 09:00 and 16:00 to 19:00 where the flight allows. For an arrival the forecourt is the wrong tool regardless: use Long Stay, where two hours are free and nothing is counting.

How Gatwick compares

Comparing Gatwick against its neighbours puts the £10 in context. It is joint most expensive to enter alongside Stansted, but Stansted includes 15 minutes to Gatwick's 10.

Where Gatwick wins is predictability. Its meter is linear, so the cost of an extra five minutes is five pounds and nothing else happens. Stansted jumps to a flat £28 the moment you pass 15 minutes, and Heathrow has no overstay price at all.

Where it loses is the entry price and the penalty. £10 in and £100 if you forget are both at the top of the range, and the two-terminal geography adds a way to pay twice.

What a booked transfer changes

Booking a licensed Gatwick transfer does not exempt the vehicle. The driver enters the same forecourt, the same camera reads the plate, and the £10 is still owed on the journey.

The difference is that the terminal question stops being yours. An airport transfer operator working from your flight number knows whether the aircraft goes to North or South, so the wrong-terminal £20 does not happen and neither does the shuttle.

On arrivals it matters more again. Meet and greet uses the car park rather than the forecourt, so a delayed landing does not put a driver on a metered kerb watching a clock. The fare was fixed before the flight took off.