A SHOCKED daughter visited her mum’s grave to find what looked like a parking ticket slapped on her headstone.

When Sarah Handley opened the red plastic wallet which had ‘documents enclosed’ written in large letters, she found it was a notice from the local council requiring her to reduce the width of the plot by an inch.

Sarah, 46, who made the discovery on Mother’s Day, said: “It shows a total lack of respect for my mum’s memory and the feelings of her family.”

The letter from Stockton Borough Council was secured to Shirley Handley’s grave with tape and was flapping in the breeze when Sarah arrived with flowers at Thornaby cemetery.

Sarah, from Middlesbrough, said: “Someone has decided the grave decorations are about an inch over, but I wouldn’t even be annoyed at that. It’s that they just slapped a ticket on the side of my mum’s gravestone.

“I rang them to tell them I was upset, and they said they had tried to get in touch with me but they had an old address. Surely there was a better way to do it than that, though.

“It sounds pathetic to be arguing over a grave, but I’m really upset and annoyed.

“I went to my mum’s grave on Mothers’ Day and the council had just issued a notice saying the garden in front of the grave was too big, but it has been like that for over a year.

“I took a picture of it and put it on Facebook. I thought it was disgusting and I wanted people to see what they had done.

“My mum was such a lovely woman and she doesn’t deserve this.

“The reason I’m so upset with the council is because of the way they have tried to contact me.”

Sarah visited the grave with daughters, Ellis, 18, Lauren, 24 and grandson Hugo, seven, on Sunday.

Sarah, who is a nurse who also runs her own aesthetics business, had just returned from holiday when she made the discovery.

Her mother, Shirley, passed away three years ago, when she was just 65.

Sarah’s fiancee, Paul Spriggs, worked on making the grave garden about a year ago. It is decorated with a terracotta border, white pebbles and solar-powered lights.

“It’s on a bank,” said Sarah, “without the border things would just slip away and my mum would have been mortified.

“I was really, really upset. I just didn’t expect to see that on Mothers’ Day.”

Stockton Council’s cabinet member for environment and housing, Councillor Mike Smith, said the council understand people “may with to personalise their loved one’s grave” and it tries “to be fair to everyone”.

Coun Smith added: “We have been trying to contact Mrs Williams for some time as a kerbstone from her mother’s grave is encroaching onto a neighbouring grave.

“We appreciate how sensitive this is and so we always make every effort possible to contact families to discuss how this can be resolved.

“As we could not get in touch with Mrs Williams we placed a letter on the side of her mother’s headstone two weeks ago – she has now been in touch and we have arranged for her to meet a member of the Bereavement Services team on site to discuss this further.”