Ban on wheel clamping

There can’t be many people that were sad to hear a ban on wheel clamping will be introduced shortly. It will only apply on private land, but proponents are celebrating the fact that “the menace of rogue, private sector wheel-clampers”, as Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone describes them, will finally be dealt a severe blow.

It takes very little to sympathise with the misery experienced by scores of motorists at the hands of unscrupulous firms that have been given carte blanche to apply almost any figure they like to release a clamp. However, there is a sneaky suspicion here that the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater. We can all be sidetracked during the media’s silly season by tales of 30-hour sit-ins by drivers unwilling to pay exorbitant fees to thick-necked men wielding clamps. But between the private-land-nabbing, free-to-park-anywhere mentality on one side and spiralling numbers of unregulated clamping firms on the other is an ocean of sensible approaches, sanctions and regulation.

There are at least two potential problems to an outright ban of clamping activities on private land. The first is what anyone who runs a business would do if a significant proportion of your trade was suddenly made illegal: raise your fees elsewhere. Clampers will remain employed by councils and police on highways following this ban; woe betide the motorist that leaves their car on local authority land after the Bill gets its Royal Assent. Then there’s the issue of what owners of private land are supposed to do to prevent their premises from being used as a free car park by opportunistic motorists. And here is where things become a little vague. The Home Office says landowners can either erect barriers or ticket people flouting the law with eventual recourse to the civil courts if that fails to inspire obedience. But that will be time consuming, costly and impractical.

The British Parking Association has got a point when it says progress can be made by addressing “the scrag end of the market occupied by rogue clampers”, not by simply banning everyone. Private parking needs to be tightly regulated and the cowboys need to be kicked out, but is a blanket ban on everyone working in this sector the way forward?

More articles can be found on the Keep me on the Road transport law blog. For further information contact Anton Balkitis or Lucy Wood on 0800 046 3066 or visit Rothera Dowson’s road traffic law website if you are looking for a personal or commercial transport law solicitor.