We’ve written before about private road clampers in our area.
The charges are extortionate – and people can be charged about 200 pounds extra, just for paying by card. And we’ve seen instances where the vehicle was apparently parked on public highway, and still got clamped.
So we think most people will be pleased that the coalition government is banning road clamping on private land in England.
The Coalition minister in charge of this is Lib Dem Lynne Featherstone, and she writes on her blog:
Wheel clamping on private land (and towing away) is to be banned by the coalition government. We had a commitment to tackle rogue wheel clampers in the coalition agreement ? and now we are able to take this forward.
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It falls in my portfolio at the Home Office. Immobilisation has always had a track record of grief and misery. There cannot be an MP in the land who has not had constituents come to them who have been clamped ?unfairly?. The complaints that have come in to the Home Office are tales of exorbitant fees, abusive behaviour, signage being invisible and so on.
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In a recent adjournment debate I recall that examples were given of a disabled motorist being frog marched to a cash point in the middle of a freezing night to get cash to pay the release fee.
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Of course, landowners have a right to stop people parking on their land ? but no longer by clamping. In Scotland ? where clamping was banned nearly twenty years ago (very successfully) landowners either protect their land by barrier methods or introduce ticketing.