A woman says her Mother’s Day meal with her 87-year-old mum, who has Alzheimer’s, was ruined after receiving a “threatening” parking fine from KFC.

Louise Zebua was eating at the branch in Westwood Retail Park, Broadstairs, on March 18 - the day before Mother's Day - with mum Doris, sister Pam, and Louise’s husband and two teenage kids.

But after spending just over 90 minutes at the restaurant, she and Pam were shocked to receive a letter from Civil Enforcement last Friday 31 March slapping them with £100 fines.

Louise told KentOnline of her shock to receive the penalty notice, and says the stress of the situation has spoiled the memory of a nice meal with her mother.

“We have fond memories at KFC with her and she still remembers she likes it so my sister and I planned to meet there and treat her for Mother’s Day,” began Louise.

“I didn’t notice any of these new signs, but there’s nothing on the parking bays. Having gone back you can see the signs on the wall but they’re not clear. Nobody in the store tried to remind us either.

“When you’re with an elderly person who needs lots of attention your focus is just on them and getting them through the situation, we were trying to get her through the door.

“It’s really left a dampener on our memory of the day, we won’t get many more Mother’s Days left with our mum and it’s one of the few things left we have to share with her.”

The Margate resident had arrived at the eatery at 11.22am with Doris and her family, meeting her sister there.

With Doris suffering from Alzheimer’s, a form of dementia, the family say that they were unable to actually spend Mother’s Day with her on the Sunday due to the need to retain an organised schedule.

After leaving at 1pm, having forked out £30 for a party bucket for the family to share, Louise had no idea of the wrong-doing until a letter came through the door.

Warning her that she had violated the parking company’s rules, the letter stated that she could pay £60 if she paid within 14 days of the incident, or risk a £100 fine if she tried to appeal.

Louise told KentOnline: “We couldn’t believe it, we hadn’t noticed any parking restrictions at the time so we went back to look.

“Well there’s a few signs high up at the entrance with no mention of the exact time frame, then a few in the car park that were hard to spot.

“When you’re with an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s you’re not looking around for signs that you didn’t know existed, we’re trying to get her through the door without her getting hurt in any way.

“We genuinely just were in shock, we’d understand if we’d left the cars there to go shopping but we sat and ate our meal at the restaurant."

After discussing the matter with her sister, and reaching out to the chicken giant's head office to no avail, Louise decided to pay the fine rather than risk it escalating.

While the option to extend the parking available to you does exist, it is only available by explicitly asking for a parking permit in store – something Louise wasn’t aware of until after the incident.

And the 49-year-old has hit out at the fast food giant and parking company Civil Enforcement after feeling “intimidated into paying” the parking charge notice.

“I felt intimidated into paying, the notice basically threatens you by saying you lose the right to pay the reduced amount if you take it to an appeal,” said the librarian.

“We can barely afford the £60 each, let alone £100 and at that point you’re facing a £230 bill just to feed your family at KFC one Saturday if you do decide to appeal.

“The whole situation has just caused so much stress, we didn’t feel supported by KFC when we tried to see if we could rectify the situation, they basically shrugged us off.

“You can’t even ring Civil Enforcement to discuss it, the phone number is only for paying the fine. It feels like there’s a lot of tactics being used that can catch innocent people out.”

Having already paid the fine, Louise knows it can be a very tough challenge to recoup the money.

When asked what she feels could be done to improve the matter, Louise spoke out about the need for flexibility - with a strong feeling the system is flawed.

“In an ideal world, I think KFC should up the time, people should be reminded about the time limit, signs should be on each parking bay,” she began.

“They must have had a conversation with the parking company at some point to decide this, it doesn’t feel very inclusive for disabled people and it’s frustrating.

“If not everybody can eat and get out quick enough within the time period, then surely something must be wrong with the system? I don’t want to see other people caught out.”

A KFC spokesperson said: "To keep things running smoothly at the Westwood Retail Park, the car park operator introduced a one-hour parking limit.

"We realise our guests may want to stay for a longer though, which is why we’ve put up posters inviting them to enter their vehicle details to enjoy another hour of parking on us, giving two hours in total.

"Despite this, we understand Louise’s experience wasn’t great, so we’ve contacted the car park operator to make things right and she has now been reimbursed."