Jayne Dowle: Driven to distraction when it comes to fnding the space to park the car

In the last week alone, I have been threatened with having my car clamped by a parking attendant, not once, but twice. I'm not talking about getting caught on double yellow lines by a traffic warden or running out of time on a meter.

Oh no, this was in private car parks. I won't bore you with all the details, but let's just say that I had committed a minor infringement of the rules in both cases.

For instance, I don't count being two centimetres over the yellow line that divides spaces as warranting a "final notice" on my windscreen, threatening me with the clamp.

Especially in a hospital car park, and especially when I explained to the irate attendant that my husband and I were in a terrific rush, having been caught in traffic which made us late for an appointment with a consultant. I accepted that I should have taken more care, but the abuse I got in return, peppered with four-letter expletives, was totally unjustified.

When I had calmed down from this really quite upsetting experience – the last thing you want after a difficult hospital visit is to be sworn at – I got to thinking. And it struck me that parking is quite possibly the biggest bane of modern life.

It might not rate up there with losing your job or your house, but on a daily basis, it causes more stress – and distress – than pretty much anything else I can imagine, except possibly being stuck on over-packed commuter trains in a blizzard.

The threat of the clamp, usually wielded by a power-mad official who thinks that his fluorescent vest gives him divine right to bully hapless motorists, is bad enough.

It's a nasty reminder of bureaucracy gone mad, and leaves the private citizen with little recourse except lengthy and expensive legal action. But upsetting the man with the clamp usually assumes that you have managed to find somewhere to put the car in the first place.

No wonder Leeds is on such a big PR push.

Traders say that shoppers are being tempted away by the acres of free parking at out-of-town malls such as The White Rose Centre and Meadowhall.

The council has been under fire for the stratospheric cost of parking in the city centre – up to 5 for three hours in some car parks. And commuters are very cross indeed about the threat to serve enforcement notices on several cheap long-stay car parks on sites earmarked for redevelopment, leading to the potential loss of around 2,500 spaces.

I despair, I really do. Why can't the people who run our towns and cities accept that commuters and shoppers need somewhere to park? I know that parking fees bring in good revenue, but surely we need to balance some priorities here. And council car parks are only part of the issue.

Why are those who run private car-parks so intent on squeezing every penny they can out of us?

I work in Huddersfield two days a week. If the lovely chaps who operate the 2-all-day car park on a piece of waste ground have run out of spaces –and this usually happens by 8.30am – my next most convenient location is the shopping centre car park.

It's a few pounds for three hours or so, but leave the car there for more than six hours, not even a full working day, and the cost rockets to an eye-watering 9.

On my drive home, rueing the expense of simply doing my job, I've often wondered what the justification for this can be, except for raking in profits for the company which runs it.

Parking sounds such a trivial issue doesn't it? But it's not. It seriously affects all our lives. I heard of one young woman in her twenties, a promising accountant, being offered a fantastic new job in Sheffield.

She had to turn it down because she simply couldn't afford the daily parking fees.

It just wouldn't be worth her while. What kind of world do we live in when people are forced to stay close to home because of the cost of putting the car somewhere safe for the day?

It makes a mockery of the Government's insistence that we all have to get on our bikes – or in our cars – to seek out work.

So while the promise of free parking spaces in Leeds is a nice festive surprise, I'd say this. A car park is not just for Christmas. It's for life.

And if we want life in our towns and cities, councils and private car park operators have to think long and hard about how they are going to tackle this problem.

They need to accept that people want to drive into our urban centres, and that when they get there, they shouldn't be at the mercy of profiteers and petty dictators.