'We have to be heavy-handed'

Costas Constantinou is the founder and director of London's biggest private clamping firm, Vehicle Clamping Securities, also known as VCS Parking Services.

The former condom distributor has built up a business empire based on the hundreds of clamping contracts his company has won throughout London and the South-East.

Mr Constantinou, 42, who lives in a £500,000 house in Muswell Hill and drives a Mercedes sports car, admits his company's operations are unavoidably upsetting a lot of people.

He said: "You cannot be anything else but heavy-handed sometimes. Some people are calm, some like to kick up a little bit of a fuss."

His company, not a member of the British Parking Association, charges a ?276 release fee and £35 a day for storage. With the clamping fee, drivers face a minimum payment of £423 to get their car back.

Asked to justify the huge fee, he said: "Where we store cars is a lot more expensive than where police and local authorities have pounds."

Despite receiving hundreds of thousands of pounds in fees, the firm's latest accounts show net assets of just £14,662.