A single mum on Universal Credit said a bailiff worker demanded almost £400 from her without notice after a family day out.
Jemma Martin, 31, went to Skegness for an August bank holiday day out with her then-partner and her children, who were four and 18-months-old at the time. Miss Martin and her family arrived at North Parade car park, but were not able to open their car doors properly in the space in order to get her children and a pushchair in and out of the car.
Because there were no parent and child parking spaces, to solve this issue, Miss Martin parked slightly over the white line to create room. The mum-of-two, from Nottingham, was later given a parking ticket.
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She has disputed the fine with East Lindsey District Council since then. However, in the morning of April 4, 2022, Miss Martin was faced with a visit from the bailiffs, LincsLive reports.
She said: "I have had the bailiff at my door asking for £394. But I wasn't financially in a position to pay that."
When Miss Martin told the debt collector she could not pay, he allegedly threatened to take her car, but could not because it was financed. He then made another threat, according to Miss Martin.
She said: "He threatened that he could come into my home and take my things", adding that when she said she would not let him in, he told her he would force his way into the house.
She continued: "I had a bloke in front of me telling he could break into my home and take my things. I was very intimidated, he was quite a big bloke."
On a form that the debt collector left, it stated Miss Martin had paid voluntarily, but she said she paid because she felt "threatened." She added: "I am five foot two inches, what could I do?"
Miss Martin works two hours a day as a midday supervisor at a local school, and the rest of her pay is topped up with Universal Credit payments. She is worried about how she will pay the fine, and has labelled what happened as "disgraceful."
She said: "£400 is a massive chunk of my monthly allowance, it's about half. I have got my mum I can rely on, but that's to borrow, not to have. I'll have to pay it back, so it will be a while until I'm on top of things."
Miss Martin says she was told by East Lindsey District Council the bailiff officer may not have acted appropriately.
A spokesperson for East Lindsey District Council said: "Following due process the lady in question was written to four times and no responses were received to those communications. Following this lack of response the matter was passed to the bailiffs who again wrote to the lady twice and no response was received to these letters.
"As is normal in these cases the lady was visited by bailiffs and that has elicited a complaint being made to the bailiff company that will be investigated by them using their internal processes."
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