Let's hear it for traffic wardens

Ms Grosvenor, who is in charge of Apcoa's 900 on-strcet staff, struck me as a tough cookie. I asked her how she came into the parking industry and she said: 'I was a certificated bailiff - I worked for a bailiff company that enforced warrants - I've gone in through windows at 5.30 in the morning. Clamped wheels at 5.30 in the morning. Made people pay for their sins.'

I asked her if she had felt frightened going in through people's windows, to which she replied: 'No. Because, I'm sorry, there are people who just think they can do anything and get away with it. You know, you go somewhere, and quiet, affluent, comfortable-off people think they can park where they want whenever they like and they don't think it'll catch up with them. OK, so you find some business people who've got 20 tickets, 30 tickets, 50 tickets. When the bailiffs come in then they realise, you know, the parking attendant has done his job, the back office have done their job, they've never, ever paid, it's gone right through the system, at the end of the day the local authority can employ bailiffs to enforce, so if you didn't pay your ticket and you didn't move house at some point a bailiff will knock on your door and say I have a warrant of execution, pay the fine, pay the court fine, pay my costs, my time, my vehicle, my attending, me levying distress on you, I'm coming in your house, I'll take your car and your TV and that'll clear your debt, sir.'

This surely constitutes a strong defence of what traffic wardens do. For the truth is that some motorists, including some affluent, middle-class motorists, are monstrously and outrageously arrogant. They think they can park wherever they like, regardless of any inconvenience they cause to other people, and they need someone as tough as Ms Grosvenor to tell them they can't.

But what of the frequent charge that traffic wardens are over-zealous and issue many tickets to drivers who have not actually broken the rules? Ms Grosvenor was not going to give an inch: Our employees carry out to the letter the instructions we are given by the council. We have no power to be lenient or to say "Oh, you're two minutes late, we'll let you off", because we would be defrauding the council of funds. They could dismiss us as their contractor for flouting their instructions. They rely on an income which is ploughed back into parking-related services, so that income is budgeted for and is ring-fenced.' Any motorist who considers he has been unfairly treated can appeal first to the council and then to an independent tribunal.

Ms Grosvenor said she had a parking warden in Camden who had lost an eye after being attacked by a member of the public. Ms Park, who taught for seven and a half years at a sixth-form college in south London and is in charge of training at Apcoa, said: 'I think a lot of the time the press whip up this hatred and it results in assaults on our staff.'

I suggested, in the manner of a rather wet clergyman, that once car drivers, instead of concentrating on their own sense of victim-hood, realised how tough life is for traffic wardens, they might feel sorry for them, but Ms Grosvenor was having none of it: 'We think they'd laugh and go ha, ha, good.'