One of his sellers was showing a prospective buyer a unit in Wembley and both parties parked in the designated and clearly marked visitor bays as per the sign. The sign did not warn that a permit was needed to park in a visitor bay. When they returned to their cars both had been clamped and a petty parking officer informed them they needed to display a permit – but because both didn’t have one they each had to pay $170 to have the device removed. A $340 inspection fee of a unit would cast doubt over the complex for any possible buyer but to make this situation completely unjust the sign did not clearly state you required a permit to park in the allocated visitor bays. Mr Baldwin’s agency paid the fines, appealed the charges, but received no mercy from Auto Clamp, the company which polices this car park and issues the fines.

To make this situation ever more hard to comprehend, strata documents reveal that “parking permit must be displayed at all times” is not actually displayed on the sign, so in this case it is clear that the agent and the buyer did nothing wrong. So where do you go next? There is no law or regulation that governs wheel clamping but there is a voluntary code of practice that was written in 2007. It says it has been designed to, “deter illegal or unauthorised parking on private land, it is undertaken in a fair, responsible, effective and efficient manner”. The code is intended to ensure that the owners/drivers of vehicles clamped or de-clamped in accordance with it will not be penalised by excessive charges, low quality service, vehicle damage, poor response times or unnecessary immobilisation of their vehicles.

Due to this, the police are not interested unless you hack the clamp off the car – then they will come after you. As it is a civil matter, you can take the wheel clamping company to court or write to the Commissioner for Consumer Protection. But don’t hold your breath, this is a voluntary code. We can all appreciate the frustrations that come with selfish motorists parking their cars in a spot that is not theirs like an apartment complex or for businesses and shopping complexes like the well-publicised crackdown in a Scarborough shopping strip late last year enforced by a strata company. But this is where the rights of a strata company need to be questioned.

It will argue that it is private property and therefore can set the terms of parking. But can it? There is an argument that the act of wheel clamping in a strata complex may actually be illegal in that it is a breach of the Strata Titles Act. The Strata Titles Act does not allow strata companies to impose a fine without the specific approval of the State Administrative Tribunal. So, the placing of wheel clamps would be considered to be a fine as it requires the paying of cash to have the restriction removed.

Therefore wouldn’t a strata company require an order from the State Administrative Tribunal before taking every single action of applying a wheel clamp? WA is one of the few Australian states still allowing the practice of wheel clamping. It was junked in Queensland 20 years ago while the New Zealand Government is considering outlawing the practice. Wheel clamping should be clamped closed for good.