From Nick Le Cornu.
LAST year my own experience at the hands of arbitrary wheel clampers led to questions being asked in the States as to the legality of the practice and the promise by government of regulation.

As your article on 8 July clearly demonstrates, the public continues to suffer at the hands of aggressive clampers, while the issue remains in an unresolved legal limbo.

While canvassing as a candidate during the elections last November in St Helier No 1 District, I too encountered the tall east-European wheel clamper referred to in the article, but narrowly avoided his clamp by returning to my car with seconds to spare.

Parked on the visitor’s parking bay at Hautmont Estate a sign stipulated that drivers must place a note in their windscreen stating which flat they were visiting or face clamping. Such a requirement is clearly absurd and indicates commercial landowners are equally complicit. Certainly a release fee would have made an interesting entry on my candidate’s expenses return.

The Home Affairs Minister at a Scrutiny meeting on 8 July had to confess that there was no immediate prospect of government action. The law of Jersey on wheel clamping remained uncertain and above all untested. Resolution awaited either a test case in the Royal Court on the point of legality and its limits or legalisation and regulation by a specific statute. Given the low priority of the issue, the final of 29 action points on his list of urgent matters, there was no prospect of imminent legislation.

Senator Le Marquand personally favours the English code of practice to prevent arbitrary behavior by clampers. While Magistrate he initiated a policy of refusing clampers a judgment against drivers, pending a test case on the law. Since the clampers did not want a test case, they simply repaid monies to those courageous enough to bring an action for return of the release fee. It presumably remains open to every suffering motorist to sue the clampers for the return of their £75.

The excesses of wheel clampers are not going to be stopped by government any time soon. The previous Home Affairs Minister and her successor implicitly accepted its legality as an extension of private property rights.

Those rights trump any sense of injustice to motorists. So long as there is wheel clamping there will be aggression and arbitrary conduct.

In Scotland and in Europe, demanding a fee for release of a clamped car parked unlawfully on private land is treated as a criminal offence – extortion – demanding monies with menaces. We await a test case that might reveal Jersey law need not slavishly follow that of England.
Only a vociferous public campaign to make clamping illegal will protect the public from the inevitable violence of the clamper’s trade.