Is Private Clamping Legal?

Private clampers certainly make carrying out courier jobs that little bit harder, as you struggle against the clock to deliver a parcel, all the while praying that the clampers don't spot your white van parked on their private driveway or office block car park. However, it has recently emerged that private wheel clamping could very well be illegal and, under UK law, an infringement of our human rights.

According to the RAC, the clamping of cars by private companies could be an infringement of the 1998 Human Rights Act. The motoring organisation says that the fines charged by private individuals are usually exorbitant and unjustifiable. The fines for parking on private land are also demanded without any type of legal process and this is something that the RAC would like to see changed. The changes would certainly help people with courier jobs, as there is nothing worse than returning from a delivery to find a large yellow wheel clamp placed on your beloved van.

The move comes after the launch of a Daily Mail campaign to demand that the government strengthens regulations on private wheel clamping and ultimately makes it illegal, as it is in Scotland. Once the newspaper introduced the campaign it was simply inundated with stories of unjust instances of car clamping. A man on a courier job who found his van clamped after delivering some documents, made the headlines when he took a sledgehammer to the clamp and broke it off himself to avoid paying the exorbitant fine and another man found his car clamped after popping into a private office block to pay off his girlfriend's wheel clamp fee. The price charged by private individuals doesn't seem to be in any way consistent. Whilst some people have reported having to pay £75.00 fine to free a car from the car park of an office block, another woman wrote into the paper describing how she had to pay a £375.00 fee.

So how exactly is wheel clamping illegal? Chris Elliott, a barrister for the RAC, argues that the concept of one citizen punishing another is alien in English law and that the purpose of clamping is simply to prevent a vehicle being on private land without permission. Therefore, Chris argues, clamping is perverse as it perpetuates the harm caused to the landowner which is ultimately a self-inflicted wound. The only tactic is to punish or deter, both of which have no foundation in English law. This is because they are based on a notion that one person cannot punish another and that punishment is a power reserved solely for the State. There are further arguments by barristers that the practice of clamping is also contradictory to protocol 1 of the Human Rights Law, which states that every person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions and should not be deprived of them, unless in accordance with English law.

The Home Office is in the midst of proposing a new licensing regime for private clampers. However, with arguments that the very action of depriving people of their vehicle is illegal, it seems unlikely that the changes will now go ahead. With the RAC strongly arguing the legal elements of clamping, it seems extremely likely that the very act of private wheel clamping will be made illegal. And for us in courier jobs, it's certainly a case of the sooner, the better.