Car clampers

2009 press releases

14th Sept: Norman says Time To Run The Cowboy Clampers Out Of Town

Britain is being held to ransom by an army of cowboy clampers in a multi-million pound scam that amounts to little more than highway robbery. It is a monumental rip-off that needs to end now.

Car clamping is big business. Every year half a million drivers will return to their vehicle to find it clamped and be forced to pay an outrageous sum, often around £400, to get the clamp removed. It doesn't matter how extenuating the circumstances, how poor the warning signs, how poor you are. It's pay up, in cash, or you'll be towed away, and all the time the cost of getting your car back increases inexorably, like a taxi meter with noughts on.

I can see this scandal with my own eyes early every Sunday morning in my constituency where for years people have enjoyed the car boot sale held behind the local supermarket in the middle of Lewes. And for years they have parked free in neatly marked out bays adjacent to shops on what looks like public highway. But in fact this is private land, seamlessly joined to the public road about ten yards back and now the clampers have arrived.

This is nothing but a honeytrap. Motorists are lured into what looks like neatly marked out parking spaces, only to find themselves clamped by the private firm that makes a point of being there before 8 o'clock on a Sunday morning to capture its innocent prey, like a cat pouncing on a bird. People coming along to look for a bargain go away instead having had to produce hundreds of pounds at no notice, if they want their car back.

What possible justification can there be for enforcing parking controls at such a time on a Sunday morning? And when the state's penalty for illegally parking on a double yellow line is just £30, it is indefensible for a private company to impose a penalty up to 15 times as much for parking in a marked-out bay where no obstruction or harm whatsoever is being caused.

But this is not about preventing obstructions. If a car was genuinely blocking an entrance, for example, how would it help the landowner to have it clamped so that in fact it was blocking that entrance for even longer?

No, car clamping has simply become an end in itself, an easy way to rake in the cash from motorists who have to pay whatever outrageous sum is demanded of them.

I examined the material produced by the car clamping companies themselves. Typical is Enforcement UK which writes to landowners: "Credit crunch busting incentives now being offered. Instead of paying a contractor to provide you with car park management, WE DO IT FOR FREE AND PAY YOU FOR IT." (Their capitals).\

On the face of it, such offers are attractive to landowners, but of course these services are only offered free to them because the entire cost is loaded onto the motorist.

What's worse, some companies incentivise their employees to clamp as many vehicles as possible. Crown Guarding, for example, pays its clampers entirely on a commission basis, at £50 for every vehicle clamped. In their job advert, they write: "We would expect you to clamp a minimum of 5 clamps per day. This is a a job for a clamper who is prepared to work hard and hungry to earn money."

Is it any wonder vehicles are clamped at the least excuse, within a minute of a motorist parking, and where the parking causes no problems for anybody?

Is it any wonder that this scandal can be found the length and breadth of the country?

You might think that next to the local medical centre would be a good place to park if you are visiting such a place. But not at the Broadwater Medical Centre in Worthing where a delivery driver dropping off medication found his van clamped in the two minutes he was inside the building.

In Walsall, Lydia Dykes, a student nurse, paid £1 for an "all-day" ticket to park on private land, only to return at 8.20pm after her hospital shift to find her vehicle clamped. She had to pay £390 in cash to get it back. In a novel redefinition of the word "day", the clamping company said: "All day is 12 hours. If it was any longer, it would say day and night."

And in Bath, a real horror story was passed on to me by the local MP Don Foster, who like many MPs, is apoplectic with rage about the disgraceful behaviour of the cowboy clampers and the ease with which they get away with it.

In this case, one of his constituents was clamped on private land next to the Comet store he was visiting, within one minute of leaving his vehicle. When he protested, he was charged a further £100 for "swearing in disbelief". He asked for the company address and contact details to dispute the charge but was given only a mobile phone number, which turned out to have been disconnected. It transpires that this particular company would tow cars away and then park them in a Tesco car park in Bristol.

The police were called but said they could do nothing and advised him to pay up and dispute it with the company later (even though they were unreachable). But if they feel powerless, just who is supposed to be regulating the clampers? The answer, it turns out, is a useless body called the Security Industry Authority, who in this case told the constituent that "neither the speed of the clamping nor the fee charged, or the company registration are areas that fall within the remit of the SIA."

The unacceptable fact is that these cowboy clampers are able to act in a Wild West lawless way and get away with it. The police are unwilling to act, the regulatory body has about as much backbone as a chocolate éclair, and the government wrings its hands, mouths platitudes, and in the end leaves everything much as it is.

We have recently had a government consultation on the "vehicle immobilisation industry". In it, respondents were offered four options. One was to do nothing, and three were to fiddle at the edges. The one option that should have been there was completely absent, namely a complete ban on clamping on private land.

Yet this is now the position in Scotland, introduced after the Scottish courts concluded that the practice amounted to "extortion". And the sky has not fallen in. Private land in Scotland has not suddenly become littered with vast numbers of cars. Private landowners in England and Wales who say they need the ability to clamp cars need only look to Scotland to see that this is not the case.

In fact, there is an argument that clamping on private land may be illegal in England too, for different reasons. The RAC Foundation recently commissioned a report which casts grave doubts on the legality of clamping. Its Director, Professor Stephen Glaister, noted: "There are very real concerns as to the fundamental legality of the excessive charges imposed by clampers, and indeed and form of punitive parking enforcement on private land, and these arguments need to be tested in a court of law."

The cowboy clampers must be run of out town - yours and mine. I hope some brave motorist will indeed challenge the legality of the cowboy clampers in court, though such action of course would not be necessary if the government grasped the nettle and announced that private clamping is to be banned all together. This would be a hugely popular policy, and they could do with a few of those at the moment. At the moment, the Labour government gives the impression of being more sympathetic to the cowboys than to the motorists.

We can. However, take some comfort in the short-term from the actions of the police in Birmingham, who in July arrested four men from a car clamping company on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and towed away one of the clampers' own vehicles. What a delicious sight that must have been.