Curbing the cowboy clampers

The minister taking charge of curbing cowboy clampers was today told by the RAC Foundation that the Government’s promise to regulate the activities of rogue wheel clampers now has to be put into action – to protect the possibly hundreds of thousands of people each year who fall victim to unscrupulous vehicle immobilisers.

Speaking at the Parking Summit - organized by the British Parking Association (BPA) and attended by Sadiq Khan, minister at the Department for Transport - the director of the RAC Foundation Professor Stephen Glaister said: “We get many calls to the office from the public about a variety of subjects but by far the majority of those calls concern parking. And of that majority, most are about unregulated parking: that is parking on private land, which covers everything from the driveway in front of your house to the multi-storey car parks found at airports.”

“Many drivers have had to pay large so-called penalties out of their own pockets. The list of examples is long but what is common to each case is the arbitrary and unregulated way in which charges are imposed and collected.”

The RAC Foundation has long campaigned for better regulation of an industry which is essentially lawless. At the moment some clampers are members of the BPA and adhere to their code of conduct. But the code is purely voluntary. Which is why the Foundation wants to see imposed:

A binding code of conduct on all those working in private parking enforcement
An independent appeals service
An industry regulator with the powers to remove the licences of operators who flout the rules

But even before all this the Government needs to review the fundamental legality of wheel clamping, something called into question by barrister Dr Chris Elliott in his work for the Foundation.

Professor Glaister continued: “Before creating a new licensing regime, we believe the Home Office and other government departments should address the fundamental legal and policy issues of clamping. There is urgent need for parking enforcement on private land to be at the centre of a regulatory framework.”

And Professor Glaister warned that regulation has to go beyond wheelclamping.

“It is important to understand that if this practice is made illegal, or is over-regulated, operatives who work in the margins of the parking industry will simply find another way of getting money from motorists: by ticketing for example.”

“The bottom line is that we need to put an end to the horror stories we hear about on a daily basis.”
Some of those horror stories include:

A car that was clamped whilst a passenger sat in it. Cost of release £320.

A man who had his scooter clamped and then removed after parking in the wrong place for only a few minutes. Cost £365.

A taxi-driver who was clamped as he went into a house to help a customer bring out their suitcase.

A man who was clamped after only being away from his vehicle for sixty seconds in order to pick up a chair from a friend.