Beware Clamping!
When parking these days, always look around for notices about clamping even if you’ve been using the same place for years!
Cllr Paula Smith and Phil Wagg intervened in an incident at The Baldwin car park where cars had been clamped and the clampers were lifting them onto a wagon to impound. Phil did his best to stop this by sitting on the bonnet of a car!
Months earlier, Paula met with Chilcote School to help solve parking problems while the new school is built. Agreement was reached with the pub allowing teachers to use the car park. Despite this, the teachers’ cars were clamped. Paula and the Head Teacher met the manager to clear up the confusion.
The pub had turned the car park over to a company which now controls who parks there (you need a (timed) pass from the pub). One car had been taken away but Paula got the other clamps removed and a new arrangement was entered into with the school.
Penalties extracted for clamping and removal are severe. An 80-year-old gentleman had been clamped while recycling. £125 was demanded on the spot under threat of removal of his car and an even higher demand. A kind shopkeeper lent the gentleman the money.
Cllr Michael Wilkes comments: “The law, weak as usual, allows all this. It’s a sad sign of our times to see a disabled pensioner doing his bit for the environment ending up in such a state”.
