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Have you been victim of the phantom clamper in Wellington?

Well, if not you might well be if you venture onto the piece of, what looks like waste land adjoining the premises that used to be the Barley Mow public house at the end of Bell Street.

Mysterious signs have been attached to the wall of the waste land informing motorists that the land is private and clamping might take place.

The signs are placed quite high on the wall and could easily be missed. The lettering is quite small, but clearly the land is private and motorists have no right to park there.

Since the Barley Mow became empty and eventually purchased, cars have parked freely on the piece of land and nothing has happened - until this week when the signs appeared and, more worryingly, so did the yellow clamps.

The fee to have the clamps removed is a whopping £75 and I watched incredulously as some unfortunate lady, with only good intentions, fell victim to the phantom clamper.

The lady pulled up and proceeded to take out a black bin liner from her boot. Her 11-12 year-old daughter sat in the passenger seat. The lady proceeded to walk the forty yards down Bell Street to the Cancer Charity Shop.

As soon as she was twenty yards down Bell Street a youth in a high viz jacket jumped out of a concealed doorway and started to clamp the vehicle. The young girl got out of the car and questioned what the man was doing. He explained what he was doing and the young girl started to panic.

He said that if her mother came back before he had completed the clamping he would stop so the young girl ran down Bell Street after her mother. Before she had reached Mark's Hairdressers, the youth had completed his unseemly task and had phoned the registration number through to his employers.

The distraught lady remonstrated with the youth who then disappeared from whence he had come and the lady, far from helping a local charity, left £75 worse off.

This brings into question the distasteful practice of wheel clamping and it is questionable whether a car should be clamped with a minor sitting in it. We associate wheel clamping with dubious companies in inner city areas, but it now seems that Wellington motorists need to beware.