A mum said she was intimidated when a bailiff turned up at her door demanding £400 following a parking dispute with a council following a trip to the seaside. Jemma Martin, 31, is a working mum on Universal Credit and said she felt threatened during the incident.
Single mum Miss Martin, 31, had travelled to Skegness last August bank holiday for a day out with her then-partner and children, who were aged four and 18-months at the time, LincolnshireLive reports. But when they got there, they weren't able to open the car doors properly to get the children and a pushchair in and out of the car.
Because there were no parent and child parking spaces, Miss Martin, from Beechdale, Nottingham, parked slightly over the white line to create room.She was then given a parking ticket, which she has been disputing with East Lindsey District Council since then.
And on the morning of April 4, 2022, Miss Martin was faced with a visit from the bailiffs.
"I have had the bailiff at my door asking for £394," she said. "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, to go into her house.
"I was very intimidated, he was quite a big bloke," she said. 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 said: "I am five foot two inches, what could I do?" She labelled what happened as "disgraceful."
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. Her ex-partner who was with her at the time of the parking fine is no longer with her, so she is worried about how she will pay the fine.
"£400 is a massive chunk of my monthly allowance, it's about half," she said. "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."
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." Bristow and Sutor have been approached for comment.
