Kirstie Allsopp has been reported to social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to interrail around Europe with a friend – but she has doubled down on her decision.
The Location, Location, Location presenter said her son, Oscar, went travelling across Europe with a 16-year-old friend this summer. But after he returned, she was contacted by a social worker who informed her that a file had been opened because child protection concerns had been raised.
Allsopp issued a lengthy defence on her Instagram and said it never occurred to her that social services would get involved.
She said: “I knew that we were becoming a more risk-averse culture in the UK and the US. My time in Switzerland has taught me a lot. There, as in Japan, children walk to school alone and are encouraged to learn early to be self-sufficient, and trusted to make sensible choices.”
While she knew some people may raise an eyebrow at her decision to let her young teen travel Europe without an adult, she said she hoped “the silver lining to this cloud is that everyone stops and thinks about the freedoms we had as children, and ask what harm could be done, not by the freedoms, but by the restrictions and fears we are imposing on our kids”.
She had previously told The Mail on Sunday the call from the council left her feeling “sick” and then “very, very cross”.
On Monday Allsopp tweeted earlier that Oscar had returned from a nine-day train trip around Europe, writing on X she was “proud of him”, adding: “If we’re afraid our children will also be afraid, if we let go, they will fly.”
But while some have praised the move, she has come under fire for allowing the teen to travel independently.
Allsopp says the social worker “wanted to know what safeguards you put in place for your son’s travel” but she became “incandescent” and informed the official it was none of her business and that she was ending the call.
The TV presenter said officials did not understand that she had been targeted by someone falsely alleging neglect. She has not been told how the referral had been made, or by whom.
A file was opened on Oscar and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), her local council, said it could be kept open “in case there was another referral and we needed to come to your house and look into this further”.
She told the Mail: “For me, that was the sucker punch – the idea this file might continue existing.
“What (the official) said to me was, ‘if in six months there was another referral and we needed to come to your house and look into this further, it would be important that we had kept a note of the first referral’.
“That was the Orwellian moment. The fact it was maliciously done wasn’t coming home to her.”
A spokesperson for RBKC told the paper: “Safeguarding children is an absolute priority. We take any referral we receive very seriously and we have a statutory responsibility for children under 18 years of age.”
They said it was “standard practice” for records to be retained until a child’s 25th birthday.