Woman fined £200 for littering after seagulls eat her McDonald’s chips
A mother claimed she was slapped with a £200 fine for littering – after seagulls ate a few McDonald’s chips she accidentally dropped on the floor.
Jacqueline Clarke, 34, from Kent, had been tucking into her quarter-pounder meal at a seaside Tesco in Sheerness when an environment warden ‘hidden between cars’ approached her.
Jacqui received the penalty just after 2pm on May 8, after she and her husband, Neil, collected their meal through a McDonald’s drive-thru and parked up by the supermarket to enjoy their food.
While eating, the mother-of-three dropped a couple of chips, which were quickly eaten by a number of seagulls.
However, moments later, an environment warden emerged from behind a car, claiming she had committed a littering offence and issued a £200 fine.
Jacqueline Clarke, 34, from Kent, had been tucking into her quarter-pounder meal at a seaside Tesco in Sheerness when an environment warden ‘hidden between cars’ fined her £200
Jacqui, a dog walker, explained to Kent Live: ‘I’d just finished work and me and Neil didn’t want to sit in the car and eat so we went to the very back of the Tesco car park by the sea wall and just sat next to the car.
‘I dropped a couple of chips on the floor by accident and a seagull just came and ate them, like they do.’
She added: ‘Then about thirty seconds after an environment officer came out from behind a car, where he was hiding, wearing all black clothes.’
Insisting that she could not ‘see any proper ID,’ Jacqui claims the officer ‘flashed it very quickly’ before scolding the couple over littering, while adding that the act was ‘caught on CCTV.’
The penalty notice stated that the Swale council officer witnessed ‘the lady feeding the birds chips,’ which he believed was an offence.
However, Jacqueline has been left baffled by the fine, as there were no signs indicating that feeding birds was prohibited.
She expressed her frustration, saying: ‘There’s no signs at all either that say don’t feed the birds and I said to the officer that I really didn’t know what I’d done wrong.
‘We even took all our food packaging and rubbish away with us once we’d finished eating.’
The mother-of-three dropped a couple of chips, which were quickly eaten by seagulls – but an environment warden soon emerged and claimed she had committed a littering offence
Adding to her irritation, Jacqueline mentioned the recent issues with local rubbish collection, stating: ‘I even paid for a private company to empty four of our wheelie bins because the council wouldn’t come in to do it, how hypocritical is that?
‘I pay for the rubbish to be collected and then I’m fined for dropping a couple of chips.’
The mother believes the fine was unjust and that the authorities are ‘targeting the wrong people,’ adding: ‘It was ironic because where we were sat, we were surrounded by rubbish, that we hadn’t dropped.’
Swale council later made a decision to cancel Jacqui’s fixed penalty notice on May 20, with Kingdom – the company employed by the council who issued the fine – notifying the mother in a letter addressed to her.
A Swale council spokesman told Kent Live: ‘On this occasion our monitoring showed that the notice was incorrectly issued so we immediately cancelled the fine on May 20 and have communicated this to the recipient.’
It comes as council jobsworths in Stoke-on-Tent slapped a couple with a hefty £400 littering fine after one of them put an envelope in a public bin, before they were tracked down by the address on the front.
