Kirstie Allsopp clashes with social services after son's interrailing trip sparks neglect

Kirstie Allsopp has shared her distress after social services reached out to her following her decision to let her teenage son embark on an interrailing journey.

The "Location, Location, Location" host, aged 52, explained that she permitted her 15 year old son Oscar and his 16 year old companion to travel across Europe this summer. Despite this, she received a concerning call from a social worker who told her a case had been opened due to child protection worries.

Allsopp expressed to The Mail on Sunday how the encounter made her feel: "I just felt sick absolutely sick. 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."

It remains unclear to Allsopp how or by whom the referral was made. The social worker emphasized the necessity to investigate every claim and queried the safety measures taken for her son's trip.

A file on Oscar has indeed been initiated, confirmed the social worker, with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), which is Allsopp's local authority, reserving the right to maintain the file "in case there was another referral and we needed to come to your house and look into this further", reports the Mirror.

She expressed her dismay to the Mail, saying: "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 responded in the paper, stating: "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."

Meanwhile, Kirstie's approach to parenting has previously sparked debate among viewers after she confessed she destroyed her childrens iPads following their disobedience regarding screen time rules. In a revelation on Channel 5's Jeremy Vine back in 2018, she disclosed: "This is the first time I've said this publicly. In June I smashed my kids' iPads, not in a violent way. I actually banged them on the table leg."

She elaborated by adding: "There is a game called Fortnite and another PUBG and I decided... we had made all sorts of rules and all sorts of times when we said you can't play them and all those rules got broken and in the end I said: 'Right that is it, I have to physically (break them)."