§ Lord Killearnasked Her Majesty's Government:
- (i) how many police officers, vehicles and administrative personnel are engaged full time in operating the "Denver Boot" scheme in Central London;
- (ii) how many London boroughs are involved;
- (iii) how many clampings are carried out on average each day;
- (iv) what is the cost of the scheme and how much is recovered in penalties;
- (v) to what degree is the original instruction that clampings should apply only to known regular offenders and to vehicles on which a parking ticket has been ignored for more than 12 hours now being itself ignored by the police, e.g. by wholesale unselective clampings in an area and by a traffic warden's affixing parking tickets at the same time as the police affix the clamps; and
121 - (vi) whether the deterrent effect of the scheme can be seen to have had a noticeable influence in easing and speeding the flow of traffic in Central London, and in making it easier for holders of "Respark" permits to find "Respark" spaces.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Elton)The number of personnel engaged full time in operating the experimental wheel-clamping scheme in Central London is:
Clamping team: 1 police sergeant 13 police constables 26 vehicle removal officers 6 traffic wardens Car pound staff: 1 police sergeant 8 police constables 15 traffic wardens (including 1 supervisor) Central ticket office staff: 1 executive officer 2 clerical officers 1 clerical assistant A total of 15 vehicles are being used in the scheme, which operates in part of the City of Westminster and part of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
122WAAs at 27th January 1984, 31,016 clampings had been carried out since the introduction of the scheme, an average for each working day of 139.7 clampings; and 30,313 charges of £19.50 had been paid, giving a total sum recovered of £591,103.50. This sum does not include payment of fixed penalty tickets issued at the time of clamping.
Estimates of the costs of the scheme are currently under review and I will write to my noble friend about this aspect as soon as this review is completed.
No instruction has been issued that wheel-clamping should be reserved for regular offenders or those who have been parked illegally for some time. Any illegally parked vehicle is liable to be clamped unless it is parked in a meter bay for under two hours, or is dangerously parked, in which case it would be towed away. It has been part of the scheme since its introduction that traffic wardens issue a fixed penalty notice when a vehicle is clamped.
Preliminary indications of the effects of the scheme are encouraging, but an accurate assessment will not be possible until the results of the detailed analysis by the Transport and Road Research Laboratory are available in the second quarter of this year.