Kirstie Allsopp brands complaints about her 15-year-old son going interrailing 'absurd'

27 August 2024, 15:30

Kirstie Allsopp has branded complaints made to social services about her 15-year-old son going interrailing across Europe “absurd.”

The TV presenter found herself at the centre of a social media storm after revealing her son, 15, went travelling across Europe with a 16-year-old friend this summer.

Upon his return, Allsopp was informed by social services that a file had been opened due to complaints about her son’s welfare.

Taking to social media, she slammed her critics and said the complaints "made me very angry".

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She said: "If anything it's a distillation of where we have got to, but... the main issue is that so many people seem to think the world is a more dangerous place to travel in, yet modern communications, safer transport and better emergency health mean it's a safer place to travel in.

"Oscar's birthday is in late August, so he is summer-born. This means he was always going to be 15 not 16 when doing post-GCSE activities.

"The obsession with this age boundary is bizarre."

The Location, Location, Location star added her son is “proud” of his trip.

"I hope the silver lining of all this fuss is that a debate has begun about how we best help teenagers become confident, capable adults, and how factually and realistically we perceive risk," she said.

Speaking last week, she said officials did not understand that she had been targeted by someone falsely alleging neglect, describing the intervention as "Orwellian" and "absolutely outrageous".

"I just felt sick - absolutely sick. Then I was cross. I was very, very cross," she told the Mail on Sunday.

"It was just so extraordinary. I was in a parallel universe where they were actually taking this seriously.

"I have broken no law and nothing about allowing my child to travel around Europe is neglectful."

Allsopp said she was not told how the referral had been made or who by, with the social worker insisting every referral must be looked into and questioning what safeguards were put in place for her son's trip.

They also confirmed a file had been opened on Oscar, and 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 house and look into this further".

"For me, that was the sucker punch - the idea this file might continue existing," Allsopp said.

"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."