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Reality Tv Star Accused Of Serious Allegations At Crisis-hit Care Home For Vulnerable Girls

Reality TV star Ampika Pickston secretly took a vulnerable girl from her crisis-hit children’s care home back to a bedroom at her house and gifted her a coat, a court has heard.

It was not stated whether anyone else was at the £3 million mansion owned by Pickston, who regularly resides with her billionaire porn baron fiancé, West Ham United owner David Sullivan, who funded the failing facility for girls in social care aged 12 to 16.

Giving evidence at a Care Standards Tribunal at which Pickston is appealing a cancellation notice against her company, AP Care Homes, Ofsted inspector Catherine Fargin said: “The social worker of the child wasn’t aware the child was going to [Pickston’s] home. This should not have been allowed to happen. It wasn’t appropriate.”

The tribunal also heard how a former manager of the care home was sent a legal letter by Pickston, after the 43-year-old TV personality learned staff had been discussing an unspecified “serious allegation” about Sullivan, 76.

Pickston also allegedly threatened to stab the same senior employee — Natalie Canavan — in the eye with a fork should she “say anything to Ofsted, my colleagues at Real Housewives of Cheshire, or the media” about the failing facility, which the former soldier said left her feeling “intimidated and threatened”.

AP Care Homes employee and former soldier Natalie Canavan. Photo: Supplied

While Canavan, another former senior employee, and three Ofsted inspectors gave evidence for the watchdog in late January, the proceedings can only now be reported in full following a successful Open Justice appeal by Byline Times to be awarded access to the court documents, which included witness statements.

Pickston was permitted by Ofsted to open Moss Farm, a ‘luxury’ home in Styal, Cheshire, using a £1.2 million loan from Sullivan despite neither having any experience in the children’s care sector.

Since opening in July 2023, the facility has twice been suspended from caring for children by the independent watchdog, which uncovered a catalogue of safeguarding failures, and has been shut for the past 14 months.

With Pickston giving evidence on Wednesday, she is likely to be asked to address claims made in a witness statement by senior Ofsted inspector Michelle Edge that eight managers had quit in the space of just 13 months and raised concerns over her ability to run it within the law while keeping children safe.

They include allegations made by senior staff that Pickston had pressured them to “produce backdated and fraudulent…documentation pertaining to child safeguarding matters which AP Care Homes had never performed”, and that emails and statements had been written in their name without their knowledge.

Lawyers for AP Care Homes denied that Pickston had ever made any threats of violence to staff. However, another Ofsted inspector, Emma Thornton, later told the court that Pickston’s comment to Canavan had been overheard by another colleague, Kirsty Austin, who then told Thornton about it.

In a witness statement, Pickston claimed Canavan — who has 10 years’ childcare experience and says she was headhunted personally for the role by Pickston on the promise of “higher pay than any other residential care home in the UK” — had “an unfounded grudge against me personally and against [AP Care Homes Limited]".

However, another of the home’s former managers, Brendan Prior, made similar claims to Canavan. Giving evidence in January, Prior said his personal computer login details had been accessed by someone at the company, and emails sent by someone else in his name while he was off work.

Pickston is also alleged to have deliberately obstructed the watchdog’s attempts to inspect Moss Farm by instructing employees to hide when inspectors came to the door.

Intentionally obstructing an inspector from carrying out their work could amount to an offence under The Care Standards Act 2000, Edge said.

Edge also said two former managers of Moss Farm had told her Pickston had been planning to open an unregulated children’s home, despite it being an offence under the Care Standards Act 2000 to operate a children’s home without registration — and had even created a brochure to promote it.

While the contents of the legal letter sent by Pickston to Canavan were not disclosed during the hearing, Canavan — who told the court she had consulted a whistleblower charity about her concerns surrounding the home before approaching Ofsted last Spring — said everyone hired to work at AP Care Homes Ltd had been required to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA).

“This made me feel silenced and feared whistleblowing against AP Care Homes due to any subsequent legal action," she said. Edge said in her statement that she had “never heard” of other care home staff being made to sign NDAs and was critical of their use where child safeguarding was concerned.

Pickston claims her “public profile as a former reality TV personality [and] that my partner is David Sullivan, the owner of West Ham United Football Club” had caused Ofsted to act in a manner that is inconsistent with other care homes and has been disproportionate”.

Lawyers for AP Care Homes Ltd, meanwhile, say Ofsted’s cancellation decision has “been taken unlawfully by…persons, who have exhibited actual bias against Moss Farm and [Pickston], and/or whose decisions were infected by apparent bias”.

But opening the hearing at Warrington Magistrates on 27 January, Dominic Howells for Ofsted said that AP Care Homes had not submitted “a single reference to any piece of evidence [or] argument” which would “show that AP Care Homes did not breach the Children's Home Regulations in the manner which Ofsted [alleges…or that] the breaches, [and] the cancelation [notice] would be disproportionate”.

Howells said: "Instead, what you have from the appellant [AP Care Homes Ltd] is a broadside attack on the fairness, propriety, objectivity, reasonableness and responsibility of each of the inspectors who oversaw the appellant.

"The inspectors are said to be biased, deliberately obstructive, intransigent, motivated by animus, lacking in moral compass, lacking in integrity, contemptuous, high handed, incompetent, unethical and disingenuous.

"The appellant's case is bombast and histrionics in its purest form, and is a fig leaf to conceal the complete lack of forensic substance. In a nutshell…the appellant's case…is long on aggression and short on substance.”

Sullivan — who is worth an estimated £1.2 billion and owns a 38.8% majority stake in West Ham — was not among the parties involved in proceedings.

Rainer Hughes, the law firm which acts for Sullivan, Pickston, and AP Care Homes Ltd, was asked what the “serious allegation” raised by the home’s staff pertained to, and why the discussion by employees about the matter had not been treated as a whistleblowing claim, but they failed to reply.

There is no suggestion Sullivan — who is not listed as a director of AP Care Homes Ltd but has a history of hiding his financial involvement in companies behind complex business arrangements — has any involvement with the firm beyond the provision of financing.

The hearing continues, with a decision about the home’s future made in April.

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Reality Tv Star Accused Of Serious Allegations At Crisis-hit Care Home For Vulnerable Girls

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