Wanted: a parking ombudsman (Parking Fines and Clamping)

Member Name: pussycat

Product:	Parking Fines and Clamping
Date:	01/09/00 (2084 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Keeps traffic moving, some tickets/clamping is justified

Disadvantages: Too expensive, unjustly operated, limited right of appeal

In many way, parking tickets and wheel clamping are necessary evils. Many people would park wherever they fancied however inconvenient this is to other people unless there was so sort of sanction for doing so. I know that I park on double yellow lines if I think I can get away with it.

Having said that, there is a serious need for some sort of regulation of the way in which both traffic wardens and wheel clamping firms operate.

Firstly, traffic wardens. Although I sometimes have my doubts, they are people and people doing a highly unpleasant job at that. This means that they come equipped with the full range of human flaws and emotions that plague us all. So they don't always play by the rules and this can be extremely frustrating.

For example, one of the two traffic wardens in my town NEVER give tickets to locally registered cars. I was in a coffee shop last year and watched him work his way down a long row of illegally parked cars and only give some of them tickets. I happened to mention this to a friend of mine who is on the town council who explained that the traffic warden is a dedicated Welsh nationalist who is notorious only for issuing tickets to "foreign" vehicles.

Equally, I once parked on double yellow lines to return a video in my home town. There was another car parked in front of me. When I came out, they were both getting tickets from traffic wardens. I started to grovel to mine who refused to budge when, to my astonishment, Matthew Kelly pops out of the video shop (he lived in Bournemouth at the time) and starts chatting away to the traffic warden who was giving him a ticket. He ends up giving them both his autograph and not getting a ticket - and he had been there longer than me! (I did offer the traffic warden my autograph but, strangely, he wasn't interested). Anyway, the point of these anecdotes is to illustrate that traffic wardens do not operate the system fairly - if you w
ere one, would you give tickets to your family and friends, I think not!

This brings me to wheel clampers. I have no personal experience of this but know of people who have including one friend who wasn't parked - she was turning her car round because she was lost and the clamping van blocked her in and forced her car to stop. One thing I would advise is to bargain with them - my brother was clamped and offered them £50 instead of the required £75 and they accepted it. Equally, another friend once told them to have the car as it was worth less than the £135 release fee and they ended up taking the clamp off and letting him drive it away.

Again, this illustrates the way in which the system is being abused by those who operate it - it might work in your favour but it generally works against you.

I feel that there should be a 'clamping ombudsman' who regulates the operation of wheel clamping firms and to whom an appeal can be addressed if the circumstances in which the car is clamped are unfair. At present, you can sue for trespass to goods and get a court order which requires the clamping firm to release your car. The problem is that this is rather daunting to do unless you have legal expertise. The problem is that there would be no legal aid for such an application so it could end up costing you more than the clamping fee. The procedure is really straightforward to do but many people would be daunted by the idea of making an personal application to the court. I have to admit that everyone I know who has done this were either solicitors or barristers thus were familiar with court procedure but you don't have to be - its quite simple, I promise you.

Anyway, an independent body with power to arbitrate in such cases would remove the need to bring a civil action. Such a body could impose rules for the operation of clamping firms and could oversee a system of registration which would go some way towards clearin
g up the wheel clamping industry.

This could also apply to people who feel they have been given a parking ticket that wasn't merited. I once had to pay a fine because my pay and display ticket had come unstuck from the window. I did argue with the council but they said that I was admitting it wasn't displayed because I accepted that it wasn't on the window. Such cases could be referred to an ombudsman who could determine whether or not payment was justified in the circumstances.

At present, there is no effective appeal procedure against either wheel clamping or parking tickets. I do appreciate that there has to be a system to stop people parking wherever they fancy but equally that system must be fair and must include a procedure to challenge unjustly imposed penalties which can amount to over £100.

(Gosh this turned out to be a lengthy opinion - thank you for reading this far. In return I promise to provide free advice on how to bring an immediate civil action for trespass to goods should your car ever be clamped)

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