A CAR clamping firm has hit back over claims they used bully boy tactics to stop people illegally parking in Melksham.

Rowencroft Immobilisers, based in Worcester, were brought in to stop people using the private car park in the Market Place, reserved for users of the Aqua Leisure and Melksham Electrical Company shops.

A spokesman for the firm said: "We were employed by the owners of these shops specifically because people were in their shops but were unable to park in their car park.

"In the two days we were there we only removed four cars. If we were using bully boy tactics we would have removed the cars and made more money but that was not the object of the exercise. "The most important thing to remember about all these people who park there is that they are law breakers. Rowencroft has not broken the law."

People in the town had been using the 12-space car park rather than the town's King Street car park, which has one hour's free parking, in order to visit other shops or the town's swimming pool.

Drivers complained about the attitude of the clampers and the shopkeepers apologised and asked the company to leave. Rowencroft have denied their workers were rude to people and said they were just doing the job they had been hired to do.

Some of the drivers complaining said the company should only have been clamping cars inside working hours but the spokesman said part of their brief was tackle the problem of people parking there while on a night out and not returning to collect their cars until part way through the following day.

Claims the firm had been using nearby land as a makeshift pound were also denied.