Car clamped in New Zealand, the $100 wheel clamping limit and your rights

Last updated 14 September 2026. This is general information, not legal advice.

You come back to the car park and there is a yellow clamp on your front wheel, a sticker on the windscreen and a phone number to ring. The person who answers wants money before the clamp comes off. For years that number could be anything the operator chose. New Zealand’s Automobile Association told RNZ in January 2020 that fees of $200 were common before the law changed, and the NZ Herald reported cases in Auckland where shoppers were asked for $450, and in one case a couple was charged $760, to get a clamp released.

That ended on 2 January 2020. Since then the law has set a hard limit of $100 on what a private clamper can charge, put duties on the clamper to turn up and release the vehicle promptly, and given you the right to take the clamp off yourself if they do not. This guide sets out exactly what the rules are, what to do in the car park, how to get an unfair fee back, and how the Disputes Tribunal has decided real clamping disputes. It covers clamping only. If your car was towed rather than clamped, read our separate guide on getting your car back from a towing company, and if you have received a private parking “fine” in the post, our guide to challenging a private parking notice is the one you want.

What the law says about wheel clamping

The rules sit in Part 7A of the Land Transport Act 1998, sections 98C to 98E, which were inserted by the Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Act 2019. The amendment Act passed its third reading on 19 November 2019 and came into force on 2 January 2020. The Act uses the term “immobilising device”, which it defines as a wheel clamp or any other device intended to immobilise a vehicle or restrict or impede its movement, and “operator”, meaning the person who has control over the device. In plain terms, the operator is the clamping company or the individual clamper.

Section 98D does four things. It caps the fee. It says the operator may require payment before removing the clamp. It requires the operator to remove the clamp, or arrange its removal, as soon as reasonably practicable after the fee is paid. And it requires the operator to be reasonably available to respond to your request to have the clamp removed. Breaching the fee cap or the removal duty is an offence. Section 98E gives police enforcement powers and preserves your right to take a dispute to the Disputes Tribunal.

One point the Act is careful to make is that it does not, by itself, authorise anyone to clamp anything. Section 98D(6) says the section “does not of itself authorise an operator to apply an immobilising device to a motor vehicle parked in a parking place”. Whether the clamp was lawful in the first place is still decided under the ordinary law of trespass, which comes down to the landowner’s authority and the signage. That matters, and it is covered below.

The $100 cap and what it covers

Section 98C sets the “prescribed amount” at $100 including GST unless regulations set a different figure. No regulations have changed it, so the cap is still $100. The Government said when the law passed that the figure could be adjusted in future for inflation or a change in GST, but as at September 2026 that has not happened.

The wording of the cap is broad and it is worth knowing. Section 98D(2)(a) says the operator must not require you to pay a fee “relating to the removal of the immobilising device or any other matter” that exceeds the prescribed amount. The words “or any other matter” mean the $100 is the total. An operator cannot charge $100 for the clamp release and then add a call-out fee, an administration charge, a waiting fee or a “parking breach” penalty on top. Consumer Protection, the government consumer agency, puts it plainly. You can only be charged up to $100 in total if your vehicle has been clamped.

The operator can insist on being paid before the clamp comes off. That is allowed by section 98D(2)(b). What they cannot do is demand more than $100, and paying the $100 does not stop you disputing whether the clamp should have been applied at all.

What the clamper must do

Two duties sit alongside the fee cap. First, the operator must be reasonably available to respond to a request relating to removal of the clamp. If the number on the sticker rings out for an hour, that is a breach. Second, once you have paid, the operator must remove the clamp, or arrange for it to be removed, as soon as reasonably practicable. If no fee is being charged, they must remove it when you direct them to.

The Act does not put a number of minutes on “reasonably practicable” or “reasonably available”. When the bill passed, the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs at the time, Kris Faafoi, said in the Government’s announcement that there were “no hard and fast rules around this” but that he would consider situations where the delay “causes people unnecessary hardship or inconvenience to be unreasonable, and in breach of the rules”. Consumer NZ’s view is stronger. Its advice on the law says “We think you shouldn’t have to make more than one phone call.”

If the operator breaches either duty, two things follow. Failing to remove the clamp after payment is an offence in its own right, and the delay opens the door to you removing the clamp yourself, covered below.

When clamping is lawful at all

The $100 cap is a limit on what a clamper can charge, but it assumes the clamp was lawfully applied. Often it was not, and that is where refunds come from. There is no statute that gives private operators a right to clamp. The right, such as it is, comes from the common law of trespass to land. A landowner, or someone acting with the landowner’s authority, may take limited self-help steps against a vehicle that is trespassing on their land, and only where the driver was clearly warned of the consequences. Two things therefore have to be true.

• The operator must have the landowner’s authority for that site. Consumer Protection’s guidance is that only an agent of the landowner or business, such as an employee or the owner themselves, can lawfully have a vehicle clamped. A company that patrols car parks on its own initiative has no right to clamp anyone. Ask who authorised it, and ask for proof.
• The signs must have made the conditions and the consequence clear. If you parked in breach of clearly displayed conditions that warned of clamping, you are treated as having accepted that risk. If the sign was missing, hidden, too small, contradictory or ambiguous, there was no warning and no basis for the clamp.

The Disputes Tribunal has applied both tests in published decisions. Names are anonymised in Tribunal decisions, so the parties appear as initials.

• In BE v TU Ltd [2018] NZDT 1502, decided 6 December 2018, a man visiting an embassy parked in a numbered space and was clamped and charged $150. The referee found the signs “were not sufficiently clear in the overall context” to warn an ordinary person that the space was reserved, and ordered the full $150 refunded. The referee’s summary of the law is useful. “The law surrounding wheel clamping is not entirely clear in New Zealand, but it seems from decided cases that any right to clamp at least requires clear signage to warn the vehicle owner of the risk that the vehicle could be clamped.”
• In KY v TU Ltd [2019] NZDT 1521, decided 23 May 2019, a woman dropped a friend at the same embassy, followed her inside, and returned after about a minute to find her car clamped. The sign was clear and she had seen it, but the referee held that the landowner had suffered no actual damage from a one-minute stop, that it was reasonable to expect a few minutes to obtain a permit or make enquiries, and that the clamper was not entitled to clamp. The $150 fee was ordered refunded.
• The tests cut both ways. In RT Ltd v LC [2020] NZDT 1413, decided 27 July 2020, a driver who knowingly parked in a private car park with a clear clamping sign, and who the referee found had removed and damaged the clamp, was ordered to pay the operator $711.32. The referee said wilful blindness “does not excuse LC from taking a few seconds to check the conditions upon which he was parking on private land”.

The lesson from the three cases is that the signage and the authority decide whether the clamp was lawful, and the Act decides how much can be charged if it was. Photograph the signs before you leave the car park, whatever you decide to do next.

Where the rules apply and where they do not

Part 7A applies wherever a private operator clamps a vehicle parked in a “parking place”, which the Act defines as a place on a road where a person is able to park. The Land Transport Act’s definition of a road is wide and includes places the public has access to, such as shopping centre, supermarket, hospital, apartment building and business car parks. Those are exactly the places private clamping happens.

The section does not apply in two situations. The first is where the parking place is on a road under the control of an enforcement authority that can issue parking infringement notices, which means council-controlled streets and car parks and police enforcement. Councils and police deal with parking through tickets and, where necessary, towing, not private clamps. The second is where the clamping is authorised by or under another law. Neither exception helps a private clamping company in a mall car park.

What to do when you find a clamp on your car

The sequence that protects you best, drawn from the Act and from Consumer Protection’s advice, is this.

• Photograph everything before you touch anything. The clamp, the sticker, where your car is parked, every sign you can see and, just as importantly, the places where you would expect a sign and there is none. Faded boundary lines and obscured signs are evidence.
• Note the time you called and how long they took. The operator has to be reasonably available and has to release the vehicle as soon as reasonably practicable after payment. A record of the times is what proves a breach.
• Ask who authorised the clamp. The operator must be acting for the landowner or occupier of that specific site. Ask for the operator’s name and the company’s contact details.
• Pay no more than $100, and get a receipt. If the clamper asks for more, remind them the maximum fee under the Land Transport Act is $100 including GST. If they still insist, call police on 105. The AA and Consumer NZ both gave that advice when the law came in and it remains correct. Consumer Protection also notes you may be able to negotiate a reduced fee, or pay part and take an invoice for the rest.
• Say you are paying under protest if you think the clamp was unfair. Paying to get your car released does not stop you claiming the money back later.
• If the clamper does not turn up, keep trying and keep a record. Once you have made reasonable efforts to contact them and they have not responded, the Act allows you to remove the clamp yourself, as set out next.

Removing the clamp yourself

This is the part of the law most people do not know. Section 98D(5) says that if the operator fails to remove the clamp after you have paid, or fails to be reasonably available after you have made reasonable efforts to contact them, you “may remove or arrange for the removal of the immobilising device from the motor vehicle” and you are “not under any civil or criminal liability for the removal if it causes as little damage to the immobilising device as is reasonably possible”.

Read the conditions carefully, because they are the whole protection. You must have paid any fee that was lawfully due, or been unable to reach the operator despite reasonable efforts. You must cause as little damage as reasonably possible. Cutting a clamp off with an angle grinder five minutes after leaving one unanswered voicemail is not what the section protects. Section 98E(6) specifically preserves the operator’s right to claim at the Disputes Tribunal for damage to the clamp, and the RT Ltd v LC decision above shows the Tribunal will award that where the driver was in the wrong. Where a clamper has simply gone missing, though, the section means you are not stranded, and it is one of the reasons the law works as a deterrent. A clamper who does not come when called can lose the clamp and the fee.

Police can also step in. Section 98E allows an enforcement officer to direct the operator to remove the clamp within a specified time, and to remove it or arrange its removal themselves.

Penalties for clampers who break the rules

Charging more than $100, or failing to remove the clamp as required after payment, is an offence under section 98D(4). On conviction the fine is up to $3,000 for an individual and up to $15,000 for a company. Both breaches are also infringement offences under the Land Transport (Offences and Penalties) Regulations 1999, which means police can issue an on-the-spot infringement notice without going to court. The infringement fee is $1,000 for an individual and $5,000 for a body corporate.

The Government was explicit that making overcharging an offence, rather than leaving it as a civil matter, was the point. Its announcement when the bill passed said that “Making wheel clamping an offence will serve as a greater deterrent to prevent motorists being overcharged, rather than leaving this as a civil matter for individual motorists to dispute themselves.” The practical effect is that a clamper demanding $150 is not just overcharging you. They are committing an offence you can report on 105, and the Tribunal can also order the excess refunded.

Getting a clamping fee refunded

If you believe the clamp was unlawful, or you were charged more than $100, the route to your money is the Disputes Tribunal. Section 98E(4) confirms the Tribunal keeps its jurisdiction over clamping disputes, and section 98E(5) adds a protection for motorists. Where an operator brings a claim against you over a clamping incident, it can claim no more than the prescribed amount of $100, apart from any genuine damage to the clamp.

Start by writing to the operator, and to the landowner or business whose car park it was, setting out why the clamp was unlawful or the fee excessive and asking for a refund within a stated time. Attach your photos. If that fails, file at the Tribunal. The filing fee for a claim under $2,000 is $59.74, and lawyers do not appear, so the hearing is you and the operator in front of a referee. The grounds that succeed are the ones the Tribunal has already accepted.

• There was no sign, or the signs were unclear, hidden, contradictory or too small to warn an ordinary person that the space was reserved and clamping could follow.
• The operator was not acting with the authority of the landowner or occupier of that site.
• You had stopped only briefly and the landowner suffered no real interference with the use of the land.
• You were charged more than $100, or the operator failed to release the vehicle promptly after payment.

The Tribunal cannot usually award you your filing fee back, as the BE v TU Ltd decision notes, so weigh a $59.74 fee against the amount you are claiming. For a $100 refund it is often still worth it, and the operator’s conduct is usually worth reporting to police and to Consumer Protection whether or not you file.

Clamping compared with towing

The $100 cap applies to clamping and only to clamping. Towing from private land has no statutory fee cap, and the NZ Herald reported in January 2020 that officials had considered and rejected a ban on clamping altogether. Since the cap came in, some operators have moved from clamping to towing, because a tow can lawfully cost several hundred dollars while a clamp cannot. The two situations are governed by different rules, and if your car has gone rather than been immobilised, our guide to towed cars covers finding it, the fees, the drop fee if you catch the truck in time, and how to dispute the charge.

The same underlying principles of authority and signage apply to both, and the same Disputes Tribunal hears both. What is different is that with a clamp you have the fee cap, the release duties and the self-removal right on your side, none of which exist for a tow.

How the cap came about

Clamping complaints built up through the 2010s, mostly in Auckland, where operators clamped shoppers in retail car parks and demanded hundreds of dollars for release. The AA and Consumer NZ pushed for regulation of the private parking sector for years. When the law took effect, the AA’s principal advisor on regulations, Mark Stockdale, told RNZ that “Before the law change, wheel clampers could charge any fee they liked,” and that “Fees of $200 were common and in some cases were much higher than that.”

The Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill passed its third reading on 19 November 2019. The Government release that day quoted Kris Faafoi, then Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, saying “These changes mean $100 will be the maximum wheel clamping fee that can be charged,” and describing the package as striking “a balance between protecting motorists from unreasonable and extortionist behaviour at the hands of rogue wheel clamping operators while ensuring businesses have the means to prevent people from parking where they shouldn’t”. The Act received Royal assent on 21 November 2019 and came into force 42 days later, on 2 January 2020. The Herald reported at the time that the AA and Consumer NZ wanted an outright ban if the cap failed to deter rogue operators.

The takeaway

A wheel clamp in New Zealand costs $100 at most, and the clamper has to come when you call and release the car when you pay. Anything beyond that is an offence you can report to police on 105. Whether the clamp should have been there at all turns on two questions, whether the operator had the landowner’s authority and whether the signs gave you clear warning, and the Disputes Tribunal has refunded fees where either was missing. Photograph the signs, pay no more than $100, keep the receipt, and if the operator vanishes, the law lets you take the clamp off yourself as long as you do it carefully.

Common questions

How much can a wheel clamper charge in New Zealand

A maximum of $100 including GST, and that is the total fee. Under section 98D of the Land Transport Act 1998 the cap covers the removal of the clamp “or any other matter”, so no call-out, admin or waiting charges can be added. Charging more is an offence. The cap has applied since 2 January 2020.

Can I remove a wheel clamp myself

Yes, in limited circumstances. If you have paid the fee and the operator does not remove the clamp as soon as reasonably practicable, or the operator is not reasonably available after you have made reasonable efforts to contact them, section 98D(5) lets you remove it or arrange its removal, and you have no civil or criminal liability provided you cause as little damage to the clamp as reasonably possible. The operator can still claim for any unnecessary damage.

Can my car be clamped on a public street

Not by a private operator. Part 7A of the Land Transport Act does not apply to roads under the control of councils or police, and those authorities enforce parking through infringement notices and towing rather than clamps. Private clamping happens on private land such as shopping centre, apartment and business car parks.

What if the clamper does not turn up

The operator must be reasonably available to respond to your request to remove the clamp, and failing to remove it after payment is an offence. Keep calling, record the times, and call police on 105, who can direct the operator to remove the clamp. Once you have made reasonable efforts to contact the operator without success, you may remove the clamp yourself with as little damage as possible.

Can I get a clamping fee refunded

Yes, through the Disputes Tribunal, if the clamp was unlawful or the fee exceeded $100. The Tribunal has refunded fees where signs were unclear, where the operator lacked the landowner’s authority, and where a driver had stopped for only about a minute. The filing fee for a claim under $2,000 is $59.74. An operator claiming against you over a clamping incident can claim no more than $100 plus any genuine damage to the clamp.

Does the $100 cap apply to towing

No. The cap applies only to clamping and other immobilising devices. Towing from private land has no statutory fee cap, which is why some operators switched from clamping to towing after 2020. Our separate guide covers your rights when your car is towed.

Related guides

• How to get your car back from a towing company in New Zealand, the fees, your rights and how to dispute the tow
• How to challenge a private parking fine in New Zealand, the Wilson and Care Park notices that are not really fines
• How to get out of a parking ticket in New Zealand, the council rules and the private parking loopholes that actually work
• How to take someone to the Disputes Tribunal in New Zealand. The complete walkthrough
• Your car impounded for 28 days in New Zealand, how to get it back

Where to get free help

• New Zealand Police, 105 for non-emergencies, if a clamper demands more than $100 or will not release your vehicle after payment.
• Consumer Protection, consumerprotection.govt.nz, the government agency’s guidance on private parking, clamping and towing.
• Community Law, communitylaw.org.nz, free legal advice, including its wheel clamping chapter.
• Citizens Advice Bureau, cab.org.nz or 0800 367 222, free guidance on your rights and how to complain.
• Disputes Tribunal, disputestribunal.govt.nz, to claim back an unlawful or excessive clamping fee.