New rules questioned as clampers fail to catch single parking cheat

Published on Friday 29 July 2011 13:49

CLAMPERS have failed to catch a single parking cheat since being handed new powers to deal with persistent offenders two months ago, it has emerged.

Edinburgh became the first council in Scotland to use the power in a bid to claw back around 3 million in uncollected fines from drivers who repeatedly flout the rules.

However, despite the council vowing to go after motorists with more than 20 outstanding tickets, not one driver has been clamped because parking attendants must catch them in the act.

Figures obtained by the Evening News earlier this year showed around 40 drivers had 20 or more outstanding tickets, owing more than 100,000 in unpaid fines between them.

One driver currently has 63 outstanding tickets, owing a total of 5670, while others with fewer tickets owe even more because they have not yet started to pay any of the money back.

Despite criticism from motoring organisations, the council said its trial was acting as a deterrent, with one of the worst offenders racking up just five tickets so far this year compared with 32 last year.

But Philip Gomm, a spokesman for the RAC Foundation, said: "The proof of the pudding is whether this policy not only leads to outstanding fines being collected, but deters persistent offenders in the future.

"Clearly if, as the trial progresses, there are still large numbers of unpaid tickets and more penalties being racked up then council bosses will need to have a rethink.

"All law-abiding drivers in Edinburgh will see it as perfectly justifiable to go after the worst lawbreakers. The job of the council is to implement the right deterrent - at the moment it is not obvious that this is it."

Introduced at the start of June, the new clamping rules had been due to be brought in earlier this year but were repeatedly put off to allow council officials to iron out any legal difficulties.

Clamping had once been effectively illegal in Scotland, but a 1998 amendment to the existing legislation has given the council the power to immobilise vehicles in circumstances in which a fine is payable.

A council spokesman said: "The primary aim of the scheme was to trial whether clamping would act as a deterrent to those repeatedly flouting the parking regulations and, despite not having clamped any vehicles to date, it would appear to be having the desired effect."

While the DVLA has the power to clamp untaxed vehicles, the Edinburgh scheme is the first time a Scottish council has had the power to impound cars for unpaid tickets in recent years.

Last year it emerged that fine-dodging drivers had racked up more than 55,000 unpaid parking tickets in the Capital.