A mother is having to park more than 15 minutes' walk from her Burgess Hill house after new Parking rules were introduced.

Sandra Verrinder, a mother of three, has parked on the single-yellow lines outside her house in Mill Road since she moved there 18 months ago.

When she moved in, residents were allowed to park there, despite the restrictions, because of a loophole in the rules.

Ms Verrinder is on income support and cannot afford to pay £2.50 a day to park in a car park near her home, one of the few places to leave her car since it became illegal to park on the yellow lines last week.

Instead, she has to compete with other drivers to find spaces outside the restricted area and often ends up parking at World's End, 15 minutes away.

She does not work because she has to look after her ten-year-old daughter, who has a mental age of five, after school.

Although there is a stretch of road further down her road where she is allowed to park, she can rarely find spaces.

Restrictions are from 8am to 6pm so Ms Verrinder said she spent a lot of time at friends houses during those hours.

She said: "I can't go home now until 6pm and the rush to get the kids out in the morning by 8am is unbelievable.

"I can't work because I have got to be at home when my daughter comes home. I have to work with her on reading and writing to back up what she does at school."

Parking chaos in Burgess Hill began in May 2000 when a driver won an appeal against a ticket he had received for parking on single-yellow lines.

The resident discovered a 1978 parking order for Church Road, which allowed limited parking, had not been revoked when changes were introduced two years later.

The appeal confused the rules and many people in the town began parking on single-yellow lines without being booked.

However, new rules have been introduced since Ms Verrinder moved into her home.

She said she would be happy to pay for an annual permit if West Sussex County Council installed parking bays.

She said: "Paying £15.00 a week for a car park is not really an option.

"There are only six of us in the road. If they just lifted the restrictions in front of our houses and perhaps gave us permits, I would not mind paying for a £50 permit.

"There are yellow lines along all the side roads. Where are we meant to put our cars? I have spoken to the police and the council and neither seem to care.

"We are not parking there for the sake of it or going shopping - we live there."

PC Jon Lelliott, of Burgess Hill police, said: "I sympathise with her but we have to enforce the rules. The lines have been there for years and when you purchase a house, one of the first things you look at is parking."

A spokesman for the council said the parking restrictions had always existed but some people had flouted these rules.

To end the confusion the council issued new regulations which made it clear drivers could not park on single-yellow lines.

He said there were no plans to put resident parking bays in the town centre.