Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after being questioned by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to travel by Interrail across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised about her youngest son, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old’s fury, the social worker demanded to know what “safeguards” had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks around the continent with a 16-year-old friend.
Shockingly, she was told that the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), her local council, could keep the file open “in case there was another referral and we needed to come to your home and look into this further”.
Speaking exclusively to this newspaper, Ms Allsopp described the council’s actions as “Orwellian” and “absolutely outrageous”.
Kirstie Allsopp has said she was outraged when social services questioned her for allowing her 15-year-old son to travel by Interrail across Europe.
To the 52-year-old’s fury, the social worker demanded to know what “safeguards” had been put in place when she allowed Oscar (seen) to travel for three weeks around the continent with a 16-year-old friend.
At 12.40pm on Thursday, Ms Allsopp received the above text message from a social worker at Kensington and Chelsea Children’s Services.
She said officials had failed to understand that she had been the subject of a “malicious” complaint from someone falsely alleging negligence.
“I felt sick, absolutely sick,” she said. “Then I got angry. I was very, very angry. It was an extraordinary thing. I was in a parallel universe where they were actually taking this seriously.”
“I have not broken any laws and there is nothing negligent in allowing my son to travel around Europe.”
The shocking case last night sparked accusations of a “paternalistic state” and highlighted how councils can be tricked into launching investigations into negligence based on “vexatious” complaints.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke, a Conservative MP and former minister, said: “This is the nanny state gone mad. Any parent thinking of allowing their teenage children to travel will be terrified by this Orwellian development.”
“Surely these council officials must have better things to do than to bully a mother who knows better than anyone how she can trust her son.”
Karen Bradley, a Conservative MP and mother of 18 and 20-year-old sons, added: “It seems like the worst kind of enforcement and a waste of effort and time by council officers who should be focusing on children who are at real risk.
‘Kirstie knows her son and knows what he is capable of and made the same decision that many other parents would make for a child who wants to celebrate the end of their exams.’
The extraordinary episode began last Monday when the Location, Location, Location host wrote on X, formerly Twitter, about her pride in Oscar after he and his friend returned from a nine-stop train ride across Europe.
Conservative MPs Sir Alec Shelbrooke and Dame Karen Bradley criticised the interference, with the former (left) saying: “This is the nanny state gone mad.”
Ms Allsopp defended Oscar Hercules, now 16, saying he and his friend independently organised the nine-stop trip across Europe.
During an interview on the BBC’s Today programme on Wednesday, he insisted that mobile phones and better healthcare meant travel was safer than in the past and that “in previous generations people did things much younger”.
But at 12.40pm the next day, Ms Allsopp received a text from a social worker at Kensington and Chelsea Children’s Services, saying: ‘I want to have a conversation with you about a referral we have received in relation to your son.’
Ms Allsopp said: ‘I immediately called the number and said, “I can’t tell you how angry I am.” I was so agitated. I said I couldn’t be more upset. How on earth do you have time for this? How on earth do you have the resources? Where on earth did you get my phone number from?’
A referral occurs when someone contacts children’s services because they are concerned about the safety and wellbeing of a child.
Coram, a children’s charity, says on its website that anyone can make a referral and that children’s services then have 24 hours “to determine what kind of response is required”.
It says the “majority of cases” will begin with a social worker carrying out an assessment, to be completed within 45 days, to “look at the needs of the child… as well as the nature and level of any risk of harm.”
Ms Allsopp, who has two children and two stepchildren, was not told how the referral had been made or who had made it. The social worker insisted that every referral must be scrutinised and confirmed that this meant a case had been opened against Oscar.
“And that’s when I felt the worst,” Allsopp said. “I was proud of what Oscar did and I thought it was an important point, so that’s why I wrote that tweet. Then I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’ve let him down.’ I was devastated.”
The social worker then told the TV presenter that she “wanted to know what security measures she had put in place for her son’s trip”. Mrs Allsopp, “angry”, informed the official that it was none of his business and that she was ending the call.
Later that day, a second RBKC official called her to insist that there would be “different views” on the decision to allow Oscar to travel. When she asked for the file to be deleted, Allsopp was told to contact the council’s data protection team, who would have to “establish whether that was the right way to proceed”.
Kirstie Allsopp and her children in November 2014 for the launch of Hyde Park Winter Wonderland
Ms Allsopp said the “surprise blow” was learning the council would keep her son’s file open in case there was another referral, even though this one was “malicious”.
“For me that was a low blow: the idea that this archive could continue to exist,” he said.
“What he said to me was, ‘If there was another referral in six months and we had to go to your house and look at it further, it would be important that we had taken note of the first referral. ‘ That was the Orwellian moment. She didn’t realise it had been done with malicious intent.”
Oscar, who turned 16 the day before social services contacted his mother, said: ‘When mum let me go on Interrail she probably thought, “I’m giving him a great experience, he’ll enjoy it.”
“So to get a call and someone says you were neglecting your child is pretty embarrassing and it must be horrible to hear.”
RBKC said it was “standard practice” to retain records until “the child’s 25th birthday” but residents “can request that this be removed from our records”.
A spokesperson for RBK&C said: “The protection of children is an absolute priority. We take any complaints we receive very seriously and we have a legal responsibility to children under the age of 18.”