A BAN on rogue car clamping has been welcomed in East Lancashire.
The crackdown will also prevent vehicles being towed away by private companies.
Yesterday people in East Lancashire said the decision made sense while some organisations said they would reconsider their current policies.
Home Office minister Lynne Featherstone, announcing the move, promised to ‘end the menace of rogue private sector wheel-clampers once and for all’.
Her Liberal Democrat colleague Gordon Birtwistle, the Burnley MP, said he believed the industry should instead be tightly regulated with a limit set on the fines that can be charged.
But he said: “The problem is, we have got so many rogue clampers they might have to ban it initially.
“If you get clamped on private land, they could charge you anything.”
As things stand, wheel clampers must hold a licence from the Security Industry Authority. A total of 2,150 currently hold licenses to clamp, but this will end once the ban kicks in, after the bill receives royal assent later this year.
Some landowners have raised concerns that the law change will mean they are unable to stop people parking on their land.
In March, the Lancashire Telegraph revealed a delivery driver taking vital medicine to flats in Montague Street, Blackburn, returned to his van to find it clamped.
The pharmacy boss, Whalley Range Pharmacy owner Riaz Hinglotwala, welcomed the ban.
He said: “It’s good news - these companies do tend to prey on people. There is an argument that people might starting parking willy nilly. But once they have the clamp on it’s just money in the bank.”
Lancashire County Council, which has come under fire for clamping the cars of its own staff who park in the wrong spaces at County Hall, said it was too early to say whether it would carry on.
Phil Halsall, the county council’s executive director for resources, said: "If central government decides to change the rules on clamping, we will look at the detail when it comes through."
Twin Valley Homes, which runs social housing in Blackburn and Darwen, said parking permit schemes at some of its sites had been introduced after requests by residents.
It has promised to review its position.
