THE mother of a disabled 10-year-old girl claimes her daughter was called "a disabled thing" by a Royal Mail driver at Feltham depot.

Lisa Jones, 38 of Sydney Road in Feltham, has been told Katy who is diagnosed with autism will not get an apology from the postal worker who is alleged to have said the insult.

The family were at the sorting office in Plane Tree Cres, to pick up a parcel but were heckled for parking in a disabled bay by two foul-mouthed employees, despite them having a blue badge.

Mother-of-two Mrs Jones had a run-in with a female employee and complained about the altercation when she picked up the parcel.

She said: "She said to me 'can you not read' so I said I'm not dyslexic. I was told I would be banned from the premises for being rude, but she had not asked if I was a blue badge holder."

On returning to the car with her daughter Phoebe, aged three, and Katy, 10, an Asian man pulled up waving his arms and shaking his head.

Mrs Jones said: "He was very abrupt telling me I was disgraceful and shouldn't park here," said Ms Jones. A heated exchange of words followed and a fed-up Ms Jones went back in the office and asked for a manager who was called in from another site.

Back outside the heartless male postal worker said "where is this disabled thing then" and walked to the passenger door, put his head on the window and went to touch the handle.

Ms Jones was forced to call her partner Dean, and then her sister who picked up a distressed Katy. A manager came and took their report and said an internal investigation would proceed and their request for an apology from the employee to Katy was understandable. For a full investigation the incident was also reported to head office.

Since September 18 the family waited for a response and were called on Monday (October 1) to be told sorry, the depot has learnt a lesson but regrettably Katy would not get a personal apology.

A Royal Mail Spokesperson said: “We are disappointed to hear of Ms Jones’ recent experience at one of our sites. We provide disabled parking facilities where possible at our operational sites for customers’ use. We need to ensure that these facilities are not misused so that they are available to those customers who qualify to use them On this occasion, it was not immediately apparent that Ms Jones did qualify to use this parking bay, and so was challenged. For this, we have offered Ms Jones our sincerest apologies. The matter is now being dealt with internally.”

Ms Jones said the badge was placed on the windscreen when she was parked up but not one person looked or asked if she was a blue badge holder but instead rude and abusive towards her family.