Private Clamping To Be Outlawed?

peter_the_piper

whatajoke1 wrote: »

Now, where to sell that angle grinder.

Hold onto it till the law changes, expect mass clamping for any spurious reason.

HO87

taffy056 wrote: »

Most problems with staying in a private parking car park would be fixed if you got a ticket going into the car park, and you actually paid when leaving, put bollards or barriers up and for most car parks you don't need a ppc in place, is it rocket science ?

Correct. The current privatised model is a thoroughly lazy one and is because the desire to "manage" private land comes not from the landowners but from the PPC's themselves who sell the idea to the landowners that it is a goldmine. It is - but only for the PPC's.

Many places are not going to install barriers because of their cost, the cost of supplying power to them and ongoing maintenance. They may be gated off in future but faced with a substantial bill for electric barriers when weighed against a company who promise you simply to send you cheque weekly/monthly/quarterly which option would you go for? Landowners just have to sit back and watch a relatively small amount of money accrue without any involvement unaware or uncaring of the amount of money the PPC make out of the deal. And therein lies the problem.

As for the suggestion that the Government will "make changes to the rules and laws around this" I think this betrays an ignorance of the law of contract upon which the vast majority of PPC's claim to issue their invoices. No Government with half a grain of sense is going to want to start tinkering with contract law but could conceivably issue regulations. However, the other legal duties that will flow from a properly regulated sector including, for example, public liability insurance; health & safety - proper surfacing, walkways, lighting and maintenance will undoubtedly price a large number of landowners and PPC's out of the market.

A regulated "industry" (I struggle with the concept that parking could possibly be described as an industry) perhaps but letting the BPA become the regulator would be worse that allowing the FOS to oversee banking.

trisontana

A Government minister on BBC Three Counties Radio has just said that "unauthorised parking on private land will be deemed to be an illegal act in the future". How on earth are they going to do that?

shortchanged_2

whatajoke1 wrote: »

As this labour supporting idiot support would say



Now, where to sell that angle grinder.

Thanks for quoting me from a totally seperate thread out of context you muppet.

HO87

...and what better example of one of the benefits of radio broadcasting could you want? The public can't actually see which orifice you are speaking out of although I understand that the trouser-rustling did give it away somewhat.

spikedouglas

I've been clamped twice, both on private land and both of dubious legality. I've also removed two clamps without tremendous difficulty and told the owners where to poke them.

That being said, the end of clamping is great. But given that parking is often at a premium, I think that there should be a right to park on unsecured land - i.e. without barriers, outside of normal working hours.

One of the places I was clamped was in a car park of a shop that was closed on a Sunday. Not sure how that practically infringed their enjoyment of their car park - the shop wasn't open or ever open on a Sunday - pretty much when I asked them, before I gave them their clamp back, it was a dog in a manger attitude.

If you're not using a resource like that I think there should be a duty to share - like the right to roam.

anewman

trisontana wrote: »

A Government minister on BBC Three Counties Radio has just said that "unauthorised parking on private land will be deemed to be an illegal act in the future". How on earth are they going to do that?

Well if people can get criminal records for putting the wrong type of rubbish in their bins or having their bin lid open (both situations which could easily occur due to someone else's actions, i.e. stuffing their rubbish in your bin) - then pretty much anything can happen can't it?!

As said so many times by so many people elsewhere, if you own land and wish to protect it, purchase a barrier. If you have enough cash to own land, you have enough to buy a barrier. Why are Government ministers too stupid to see the simple solutions and too quick to claim for expenses?