AN interpreter is facing hundreds of pounds in fines after parking legally in a road before temporary restrictions were introduced.

Workers for Southend Council resurfaced Crowstone Avenue around her motorhome while she was in Brussels working for the EU, changing the parking rules and then ticketing her car.

The council has refused to cancel the fines and instead called in the bailiffs.

Jill Riches, 64, who was forced to flee a terror attack at a Christmas market in Strasbourg last year while away with work, has been battling the council since last July.

Jill, from Leigh, explained in June her motorhome was vandalised in Grand Parade.

She moved it to outside a friend’s home in Crowstone Avenue before heading to Brussels to work.

She said: “It was a much quieter, wider road, where we thought it would be safer to leave the motorhome. When I first parked it there, there were no parking restrictions.

“They then put a parking restriction in place to start resurfacing but I wasn’t aware because I was busy working, travelling back and fourth from Brussels and wasn’t contacted. Our friend who keeps an eye out had no idea work was to be carried out and nothing was put through his door. They ended up resurfacing around the motorhome.

“As soon as he realised there was a fine he informed me and I moved it as soon as possible but they issued a second ticket.”

Ms Riches wrote to the council but claims they ignored it and instead kept increasing the debt.

She said: “Now I’ve come home from abroad to find a letter from bailiffs who say I have £443 unpaid and that they’ll continue unless the council calls them off.

“I’ve not done anything wrong.”

A traffic regulation order was adopted on the road from July 2 to July 12.

A spokesman for Southend Council said: “We accept the resident did not intentionally park in a restricted street as communicated to her in March 2019, however the resident has not followed the statutory process in which she had the right to appeal the council’s decision through an independent adjudicator, nor has she filed a statutory declaration to enable the appeals process to be put on hold.

“The appeals process is a legal process with strict controls which all penalty charge notice appeals are subjected to.”