Wheel clamping in a Haworth car park is driving tourists away, visitors to the village have warned.

Robert and Heather Smith have vowed never to return to the Pennine village after they were forced to pay £90 to release their black Land Rover after it was clamped in Changegate car park.

Mr Smith said: “That car park owner is doing the village such a lot of damage. We were going to stay in the town and have some food in the evening but we didn’t because we were so upset. That is a loss of business for Haworth.

“It was not a good experience. When something like that happens people tell their friends and word gets around.

“Haworth is lovely but I am sure a lot of people who have been clamped won’t go back on principle.”

Mr Smith said he and his wife had travelled from their home near Selby to visit his sick father in Airedale Hospital at Steeton, near Keighley, before visiting Haworth.

He said the clampers had accused him of using a parking ticket which had been transferred from another vehicle as it left – something which he strongly denies and is appealing against.

“I can’t see that we did anything wrong,” he said. “We had a valid ticket displayed and we were parked within the marked bays.

“The clampers said they had video evidence that we were displaying a transferred ticket so I asked them to show us it. They said they would after we had paid but after we handed over the money they said we could only see it when we appealed.”

Ted Evans, who owns Changegate car park, said he had been in the car park around the time Mr and Mrs Smith should have arrived according to the time stamped on their parking ticket but did not see their vehicle come into the car park. He said: “I would have remembered if a black Land Rover had come on to the car park when I was there because it was cold and there were only about 20 cars in the car park.

“I am told Mr Smith came on to the car park at 2.30pm and was seen to swap the ticket off a black Yaris. There are three witnesses to that.”

Mr Evans, once dubbed Dick Turpin – after the famous highwayman – by the RAC Foundation, said the clamping operative did not normally make mistakes with transferred tickets and he had asked for the recorded evidence to be reviewed during the course of the Smiths’ appeal against the penalty.

e-mail: kathryn.bradley @telegraphandargus.co.uk