Private wheel clamping now illegal in England & Wales..

[Spiny Norman]

So England & Wales have finally caught up with Scotland, where these shiesters were booted into touch 20-odd years ago because it was deemed by a Scottish judge to amount to extortion and theft.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19776468

I dare say it's been a case of the bad apples giving the rest a bad name, for every aggressive Neanderthal skinhead cunt immobilising a hearse during a funeral there have no doubt been thousands of legit cases of drivers chancing their arms getting the Denver boot, but I doubt any will mourn their passing.

 

Anyone here ever been 'done'?

 

[brickwall]

It's amazing it took so long for you guys to catch up. Clamping is just such an outrage.

 

Edit: Just noticed parking tickets can be claimed from the registered keeper or owner irrespective of who was driving. You can get fined for other people's crimes. Good thing is: you can have the polis remove a car blocking something without all the fuss before.

[cobblers]

The general stance with private parking tickets hasn't changed though - completely ignore the ticket and any correspondence which will include 4 or 5 letters threatening court action and demanding ever increasing fees , each with more and more red ink on until they get bored after about 6 months. Don't bother to appeal it or anything, there's no point.

 

There's something like a 0.001% chance they'll actually file a claim with a court, but most of the time they drop it when you say you're defending it. If they do drag it out to court, they can only really recover actual demonstrable losses, which for the usual case of overstaying in a free carpark are zero anyway.

 

 

These parking charges aren't fines or penalties, they are merely "charges" for breaching a contract which they can't really prove you agreed to in the first place.

[warren t claim]

As a byproduct of this new legislation banning clamping and towing, there's gonna be a lot of cheap recovery trucks being sold on Ebay this month. Might see if I can raise some funds and get one.

[Cavcraft]

Good point Mr Claim.

The trouble then is not only finding one NOT described as being MOT exempt but also trying to find one that hasn't 'just come back from the top of Scotland, down to Devon and back through Southern Spain all in one hit without stopping and did 3,792 miles per gallon whilst carrying a Chieftan pissing tank on the back and towing a Brisol bastarding Lodekker behind it.

[Spiny Norman]

The general stance with private parking tickets hasn't changed though - completely ignore the ticket and any correspondence which will include 4 or 5 letters threatening court action and demanding ever increasing fees , each with more and more red ink on until they get bored after about 6 months. Don't bother to appeal it or anything, there's no point.

 

Pretty sure I heard some clamper geezer saying one of the things they would be able to do now is pursue the registered keeper through the courts, and it doesn't matter if they claim not to be the driver at the time. Swings & roundabouts if that's true I guess...

[Doctormop]

I've got a nasty feeling that the current culture of ignoring tickets and they will go away will; ahem, go away in the very near future,

The legal system is bound to end up favouring the land owner as opposed to the "I can park where I like so there" honest harrassed motorist,

A few years ago being fined for keeping your own car on your own property without a new fangled Sorn declaration was an unthinkable violation of personal freedom but how many £80 fines have the DVLA collected?

Obviously these 'You overstayed 3 minutes so that will be £120 please" arseholes need a good twatting but anyone who repeatedly parks on private land without the owners consent and thinks they have a God given right so to do needs a little expectation management course, Presumably if said land owner chose to "tamper" with your car tyres, paintwork, windscreen etc there would be precisely fuck all you could do about it if signs of a disclamatory nature were in place.

[ashmicro]

I agree, but, legally speaking, disclaimers are a very grey area.

[Cavcraft]

How grey an area is it to clone the clamper's/ticketer's cars then park them illegally or drive through speed cameras? Just a thought like.

[brickwall]

^ A grey area indeed. Morally fine, but legally supect!

[Luxobarges_Are_Us]

The general stance with private parking tickets hasn't changed though - completely ignore the ticket and any correspondence which will include 4 or 5 letters threatening court action and demanding ever increasing fees , each with more and more red ink on until they get bored after about 6 months. Don't bother to appeal it or anything, there's no point.

 

Pretty sure I heard some clamper geezer saying one of the things they would be able to do now is pursue the registered keeper through the courts, and it doesn't matter if they claim not to be the driver at the time. Swings & roundabouts if that's true I guess...

 

They can pursue the registered keeper but, unless they can demonstrate having suffered actual losses, they will still end up 'winning' bugger all.

[cobblers]

The general stance with private parking tickets hasn't changed though - completely ignore the ticket and any correspondence which will include 4 or 5 letters threatening court action and demanding ever increasing fees , each with more and more red ink on until they get bored after about 6 months. Don't bother to appeal it or anything, there's no point.

 

Pretty sure I heard some clamper geezer saying one of the things they would be able to do now is pursue the registered keeper through the courts, and it doesn't matter if they claim not to be the driver at the time. Swings & roundabouts if that's true I guess...

 

They have slightly more pull to claim off the registered keeper but it's far from concrete, and it's been clarified that they can only claim demonstrable losses, which is far from the £100 they want to charge. Plus, the company wanting to take you to court for the fees is never the landowner, so they can't claim they have lost a penny other than the time and money they wasted sending half a dozen letters out.

 

The stuff trotted out on the TV and in newspapers over the last few days is really pretty inaccurate - They refer to the charges as penalties and fines for christ sake. They aren't fines or penalties - just "charges", no more legitimate than me putting a sign outside my house saying anyone who stands on my front step is liable to give me £150, and then taking the postman and the paperboy to court for thousands.

[Rod/b]

My understanding is that they have NO claim against a registered keeper. They have to prove who used the facility in order to make any kind of claim as they need to prove who entered into a contract with them, and by doing so agreeing to their published terms and conditions, in the first place. They may trot out "law of agency" but it's bollocks.

 

Worth remembering too that you're under no obligation as a registered keeper to disclose the identity of the driver to a private company. It's up to the parking company to ascertain who their contracted party is.

 

As has been said they won't take you to court as it isn't worth the expense of filing the case in most instances. If they did, and won, they'd be unlikely to get expenses awarded anyway IIRC, so unless they are a highly principled parking firm who don't mind making a loss just to prove a point, they'd be daft to go to court.

 

Their threatening letters are little more than speculative invoices and should be ignored.

[cobblers]

There's a bunch of people with far too much time on their hands over on pepipoo all going out and getting as many parking tickets as they can today, to see if the parking companies have changed their stance at all.

 

TBH they actually probably do want to get taken to court to give them something to do, but it does sort of demonstrate what they expect the chances of actually being forced to pay any money out are.

 

One bloke has two or three tickets already. I bet he's a right laugh at parties.

[Micrashed]

TBH they actually probably do want to get taken to court to give them something to do,

More likely its to try and prove case law or set a precedent early on in the game.

[brickwall]

VOSA still say that any keeper liability or any signage that says so is illegal.

[cobblers]

VOSA still say that any keeper liability or any signage that says so is illegal.

 

Yup, DVLA are suspending RK database access for 3 months for any PPC found to be claiming that or using fine/penalty etc. They seem to finally be starting to get their act together a bit.

[brickwall]

Interestingly enough, the new rules make it easier for a landowner to install a parking meter machine. Seems reasonable to install a machine rather than sill clamping and storage fees. I also understand they won't be allowed to charge exorbitant fees for staying over the time and they can't stop you from leaving, but they may still issue a silly ticket in a poly bag thing.

 

Time will tell.

[jakebullet]

I read somewhere that the number plate reading cameras that the idiots bung up at asda etc work on infra red light, and you can thus bugger them up by carefully adding white tape to your number plate. It doesn't reflect like the background does, so the camera reads it wrong. Ditto non reflective pressed ali plates.

 

Myth? Or likely to work?

[Pillock]

I read somewhere that the number plate reading cameras that the idiots bung up at asda etc work on infra red light, and you can thus bugger them up by carefully adding white tape to your number plate. It doesn't reflect like the background does, so the camera reads it wrong. Ditto non reflective pressed ali plates.

 

Myth? Or likely to work?

 

The cameras work on both visible light and infra-red light.... if you look closely at the camera, you'll see a bunch of infra-red LEDs around the lens (or a separate IR emitter unit nearby).

In daylight, it does not need to use the IR so as long as your eyes can make out the plate, the camera will be able to. At night it's different, but you'll be relying on the IR-reflective properties of the tape being suitably different to the plate itself which isn't a given. I'm going to say you'll be very lucky if this works.

 

Plus, by doctoring your plate, if the cops pull you they'll take a dim view - as they'll just assume you were trying to get out of a speeding ticket. Truvelo camera use IR too, Gatso's use a traditional camera and flash gun. Depending on your car's year of manufacture, non-reflective plates aren't legal either so you're on shaky ground.

 

There is something that you can apply to a plate that stops it being read by all cameras. Despite the police repeatedly saying it doesn't exist, there was an episode of POLICE STOP INTERCEPTOR BASTARDS where they were following a Mk3 Golf, on their in-car TV screen with the forward facing camera the plate was 100% blank - look through the windscreen you could read it fine. They pulled and fined him.