Kirstie Allsopp’s friends have shown their support for the TV star by telling her ‘how much they all travelled unaccompanied’ as children.
It comes as the Channel 4 presenter was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe to mark the end of his GCSE exams.
The Mail on Sunday previously revealed how a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, 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 on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend.
Speaking today, Ms Allsopp said she has had ‘constant chats with mates, and online, about how we all travelled unaccompanied’ in her youth and reiterated ‘the stats are very clear, travel is safer than ever’.
She posted on ‘X’, formerly known as Twitter: ‘Constant chats with mates, and online, about how much we all travelled unaccompanied; to school, to grandparents, to pen pals, to babysitting gigs, now it’s all ‘what the heck has happened?’ Is this all 24 hour news? Because the stats are very clear, travel is safer than ever.’
Social media users have also backed Ms Allsopp’s views, as one user said: ‘Age 12, hitchhiked from Manchester to London (& back) to see the Rolling Stones. Certainly didn’t ask my mum.’
While another added: ‘Age 14 travelled around Poland on my own for 14 days. Lived in Sweden. Parents ok with. Learned about new cultures and a new language. Taught independence.’
Another user said: ‘In the late 80’s at 16 I travelled to America alone to go to boarding school and then travelled around America with a 16 year old friend in the holidays staying in youth hostels and using planes and trains alone – we had a great time and everyone was doing it – this is still ok and normal.’
But some users believe 15 is still too young to be travelling abroad unaccompanied.
One person said: ‘ To be honest, in my opinion, the issue isn’t the travelling it’s the fact he was unsupervised abroad. He’s 15 and 15-year-old’s make stupid decisions and can put themselves in danger. Not to mention a young boy is the perfect target for traffickers.’
‘It’s very safe …. until it isn’t, then it can go very wrong very fast, which is why it makes sense to work up to big expeditions and do them at the right age,’ said another.
Astonishingly, Ms Allsopp 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 house and look into this further’.
Speaking exclusively to this newspaper, Ms Allsopp branded the council’s actions ‘Orwellian’ and ‘absolutely outrageous’.
She said that officials had failed to understand she had been targeted by a ‘malicious’ complaint from someone falsely alleging neglect.
‘I just felt sick – absolutely sick,’ she said. ‘Then I was cross. I was very, very cross. 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.’
Last night the shocking case sparked accusations of a ‘nanny state’ and threw a spotlight on how councils can be hoodwinked into opening probes into neglect on the basis of ‘vexatious’ complaints.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke, a Tory MP and former minister, said: ‘This is the nanny state gone mad. Any parent thinking of allowing their teenagers to travel will be terrified by this Orwellian development.
‘Surely, these council officials must have better things to do than intimidate a mother who knows best how she can trust her son?’
Dame Karen Bradley, a Tory MP and the mother of sons aged 18 and 20, added: ‘It seems like the worst kind of box-ticking and a waste of effort and time by council officials who should be focused on children who are at genuine risk.
‘Kirstie knows her son and what he is capable of and took the same decision that many other parents would take for a child who wants to celebrate the end of his exams.’
The extraordinary episode began last Monday when the Location, Location, Location presenter wrote on X, formerly Twitter, of her pride in Oscar after he and his friend returned from a nine-stop trip by train around Europe.
During an interview on Wednesday on the BBC’s Today programme, she insisted that mobile phones and better healthcare meant travel was safer than in the past and ‘in previous generations people did things far younger’.
But at 12.40pm the following day, Ms Allsopp received a text message from a social worker from ‘Kensington and Chelsea children [sic] services’, which stated: ‘I am wanting [sic] to have a conversation with you re a referral we have received in relation to your son.’
Ms Allsopp said: ‘I immediately rang the number and said ‘I cannot tell you how angry this makes me’. I was very agitated. I said I could not be more upset. How on earth have you got time for this? How on earth have you got the resources? Where the hell did you get my telephone number?’
A referral takes place when someone contacts children’s services because they are concerned about a child’s safety and well-being.
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 type of or response is required’.
It says that the ‘majority of cases’ will begin with a social worker carrying out an assessment, which must be completed in 45 days, to ‘analyse the needs of the child… as well as the nature and level of any risk of harm’.
Ms Allsopp, who has two sons and two stepsons, was not told how the referral had been made or by whom. The social worker insisted that every referral must be looked into and confirmed this meant a file had been opened on Oscar.
‘And that was when I felt sickest,’ Ms Allsopp said. ‘I was proud of what Oscar did and I thought it was an important point – that’s why I did that tweet. Then I thought ‘Oh my God, I’ve let him down’. I felt devastated.’
The social worker then told the TV presenter she ‘wanted to know what safeguards you put in place for your son’s travel’. An ‘incandescent’ Ms Allsopp informed the official it was none of her business and that she was ending the call.
Later that day she was called by a second RBKC official, who insisted there would be ‘different views’ on the decision to allow Oscar to go travelling. When she asked that the file be deleted, Ms Allsopp was told to contact the council’s data protection team, who would have to ‘establish whether that is the right course of action’.
‘For me that was the sucker punch – the idea this file might continue existing,’ she 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.’
Oscar, who turned 16 the day before his mother was contacted by social services, said: ‘When Mum let me go Interrailing she was probably like ‘I’m giving him a great experience, he’ll enjoy it’.
‘Then to get called and have someone claim you were neglecting your child is pretty disgraceful and must be horrible to hear.’
RBKC said it was ‘standard practice’ for records to be retained until ‘a child’s 25th birthday’ but residents ‘can request for this to be removed from our records’.
A RBK&C spokesperson said: ‘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.’