Plans to ban people convicted of certain crimes from all of Coventry's car parks have been criticised by a civil rights group.

Liberty believes the proposals need to be treated with caution.

The city council intends to serve year-long exclusion orders on all people convicted of stealing or damaging a car or spraying graffiti.

Anyone found breaking such an order by entering one of more than 20 car parks in the city would be committing trespass.

Anti-social

Liberty spokesman Gareth Crossman said the plans should be treated with caution.

He said: "Where you have to be very careful in this sort of situation is if you start using an order as a matter of course.

"Anybody who might have committed an offence that can give rise to an order could find themselves being excluded from every car park in the city."

"That's disproportionate and that really should be avoided."

A spokeswoman for the city centre management company, CV One, said they were cracking down on all forms of anti-social behaviour.

She added that there were plans to extend the scheme to include people who did not pay to use Coventry's car parks.