A GRANDMOTHER jumped out of her sickbed and raced into the street wearing her slippers and dressing gown to stage a sit-in protest after her daughter’s car was clamped.

Pat Rooney, 65, was ill in bed at home in Osney Court, Oxford, and asked for her daughter Delia Redding to visit early on Wednesday morning.

But in the time it took her daughter to walk up the stairs to the flat to pick up a visitor’s parking permit, clampers locked her wheel.

It was then that retired Mrs Rooney jumped out of her sickbed, got into the clamper’s van — and refused to move.

She said: “My daughter was up here for just three or four minutes then I heard her shout and run downstairs.

“I looked out and there was this horrible man clamping her car.

“She said she hadn’t time to put on the visitor’s pass, but the man just replied ‘it’s not my problem’.”

Mrs Rooney claimed the clampers then locked a car belonging to a nurse who parks in Osney Court to carry out daily early morning visits to a vulnerable pensioner.

Mrs Rooney, a retired carer, said: “I ran down in my dressing gown and slippers.

“I could see my daughter was upset and this guy was towering over her.

“As I went out she was remonstrating with him.

“I said ‘you’ve clamped a nurse’s car as well, and my daughter has a visitor’s permit’.

“He said he wasn’t going to wait for my son-in-law to arrive so I went and sat in his van.

“He kept calling me madam and asking me to get out of his van. In the end he called the police to try to get me out.

“He said ‘please get out of my van’ and I said ‘make me’.”

After her son-in-law Peter Redding arrived, the clampers, from Slough-based Parking Control Management, were paid £135 to remove the lock.

Two police officers arrived at Osney Court, but no-one was arrested.

It is not known what happened to the clamp on the nurse’s car.

A sign displayed on a wall in Osney Court car park makes it clear that cars without permits will be clamped.

But Mrs Rooney said: “We’ve never had a parking problem here. There’s probably 14 spaces and about six have cars in them.

“Surely the clampers could wait to see if they come back quickly or call out that they shouldn’t be parking there without a permit.

“They didn’t give people a chance to get upstairs and back down again.”

Parking Control Management declined to comment when contacted by the Oxford Mail.