Woman's car is clamped in Loughton while she has an asthma attack

Mother-of-one Jamie Jordan, 33, who has suffered from asthma since she was seven, said that she started to feel wheezy and tight-chested while pulling into the car park behind Pappa John’s pizza restaurant in High Road, Loughton, yesterday morning.

“I got out of the car to ask my friend to come to hospital with me,” said the Balders Lane resident, adding that when she came back to get her car and drive to the hospital, it had been clamped by the company Save-a-Space.

Despite pleading with the clampers - who were still in the car park - to release her car, offering to pay the £110 fine later, she was told there was nothing they could do.

Miss Jordan said that she was so upset by the incident that her asthma attack got worse and she was taken by ambulance to Whipps Cross Hospital in Leytonstone, where she was put on breathing equipment and given steroids.

A friend later lent her the money for the car to be released.

“I’m not worried about the money,” she said. “I just think it’s disgusting, the way they have treated me in that situation.

“They left me on my own in my car and it was quite upsetting.”

One of the owners of Save-a-Space, Michael Stiles, who was at the car park when Miss Jordan’s car was clamped, said: “She didn’t seem to be in distress when we first saw her.

“When she came around the corner and saw her car had been clamped, her breathing changed. I called an ambulance and stayed with her, but a distance away, so as not to stress her out.

“If you could appeal on the spot, everybody could come and say they were having an asthma attack.”

He added that Miss Jordan could appeal against the £110 release fee for being clamped in writing.

A spokeswoman for the East of England Ambulance Service said: “We were called to Loughton High Road at 9.07am yesterday.

“A rapid response car and an ambulance crew went. A lady said she’d had an asthma attack near Pappa John’s and she was taken to Whipps Cross Hospital.”