Events | 2010.08.17
Wheel clamping to be banned from private land
Enforcement companies will face fines and jail terms for clamping or towing vehicles parked on private property
Wheel clampers will be banned from operating on private land, in a bid to tackle rogue operators who exploit drivers by charging "exorbitant fees", Home Office minister Lynne Featherstone said today.
Featherstone said previous efforts to curb the activities of unscrupulous clampers had failed, and England and Wales would now follow Scotland, which introduced a ban nearly two decades ago.
Private land clamping is said to be worth £1bn a year, but has generated widespread complaints that some parking enforcement companies extorting money from unsuspecting drivers.
"Even though we have tried to make this work by licensing individuals, companies who are responsible for the setting of the fees and the putting of signage have not really responded," Featherstone, the equalities and criminal information minister, told BBC Breakfast.
She added: "We keep trying to make this work but it doesn\'t."
Private firms will be banned from clamping or towing vehicles, Featherstone said, but they will still be able to ticket parked cars, and landowners will be able to install barriers to prevent parking.
Motoring organisations have praised the move, which will be introduced in the government\'s freedom bill in November, and could be in place by early next year.
Featherstone said some firms were operating a "sort of entrapment" and an outright ban was the right answer.
She added that despite a high number of complaints about clamping firms and the poor signage sometimes used to warn drivers, there had been "very, very few" prosecutions.
"Most police forces do not spend their time prosecuting clamping companies, that\'s the other side of this problem."
More than 2,000 existing clamping licences will be revoked under the plans for England and Wales. Once the ban comes into force, anyone clamping or towing a vehicle away on private land will face a large fine or even a jail term.
The AA described clamping as a "draconian punishment" which had "caused misery to motorists for often minor mistakes".
"An outright ban on wheel clamping on private land is a victory for justice and common sense," the AA president, Edmund King, said.
"We have been campaigning for a ban against this legalised mugging for many years. Too many clampers have been acting like modern-day highwaymen for too long.
"Many elderly and vulnerable people have been ripped off by these callous cowboys. Clamping has been banned in Scotland since 1991 without problems."
Under current rules, wheel clampers must hold a frontline licence from the Security Industry Authority, with supervisors or directors holding a non-frontline licence.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/[...]heel-clamping-ban-private-land
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