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 at the Care Standards Tribunal whether anyone else was at the £3 million mansion owned by Pickston at the time.

Giving evidence during an appeal against a cancellation notice placed by Ofsted against Pickston’s company AP Care Homes Ltd, the watchdog’s 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 Moss Farm care home was sent a legal letter by Pickston after the 43-year-old learned staff had been discussing an unspecified “serious allegation” about her billionaire porn baron fiancé, West Ham United owner David Sullivan.

Pickston denied allegations she 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 has said left her feeling “intimidated and threatened”.

The TV personality also denied claims she pressured staff to create false documents regarding child safeguarding — including one incident which the tribunal heard saw a highly vulnerable girl escape from Moss Farm, leading to the closure of a motorway — and to hide from Ofsted inspectors who came to monitor the home.

The court heard Pickston had allegedly been planning to open an unregulated children’s home, despite it being illegal to do so — and had even created a brochure to promote it.

Pickston told the court that any plans she had to open an additional unregulated home would have complied with UK laws.

While Canavan, another manager, Brendan Prior, 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 granted 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 year.

The home’s latest closure concerned a charge of failing to care for a girl referred to the court as ‘Child A’ who the tribunal heard within one week in January 2024, attacked staff, caused major damage to the property, and was hospitalised with police called to assist multiple times, with AP Care Homes Ltd admitting it was unable to keep her safe.

During cross-examination, Pickston was asked why details of the incident involving Child A — including her threatening to kill (another child), threatening to kill herself, and running away — had been missing from staff reports.

“I don’t get involved in the day-to-day running of the home, so I’ve got no idea,” Pickston responded. Camavan, though, said was not her experience.

“Ampika regularly issued verbal instructions about the running of the home and would often then follow up with emails saying things to the effect of, ‘I am not running the home. Brendan (Prior) is’, in which I took to be an attempt to hide her decision-making and day-to-day involvement,” Canavan said.

Senior Ofstead inspector Michelle Edge said in a statement that eight managers had quit in the space of just 13 months, each raising concerns over their lack of autonomy, as well as Pickston’s ability to run the home, both within the law and keeping children safe.

Allegations made by senior staff included 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.

Pickston denied having done this, saying: “I wouldn’t expect any of my staff to have doctor (sic) paperwork or to produce paperwork after an inspection.”

She did, though, admit having overruled her management team to admit one child, “from a compassionate point of view”, having been advised by a senior official at the local authority — she now says, wrongly — that as a director she was entitled to do so.

Asked about her decision to take a girl to her own bedroom and give her a coat as a gift, Pickston said: “With hindsight and on reflection, if I could do things differently, I would, but… I’m only human.”

Pickston strongly denied ever threatening violence against Canavan — swearing on her own life and that of her son — that she had never used those words to Canavan: “I’ve never threatened anybody in my life,” she told the court.

However, another Ofsted inspector, Emma Thornton, told the court that Pickston’s comments to Canavan had been overheard by another colleague, Kirsty Austin, who then informed Thornton about the incident.

Pickston claimed Canavan had “an unfounded grudge against me personally and against (AP Care Homes Ltd).”

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 in October 2024, and telling Ofsted staff that no staff would be on the site.  

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

In her evidence, though, Pickston denied this claim saying she didn’t know Ofsted were at the door and it was “not her responsibility” to open the door to them.

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 (I) 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.

Addressing why so many managers had quit in such a short space of time, Pickston said: “With a [notice of a cancellation decision] being present in the home…it’s been extremely difficult to try to procure any senior members of staff to try to assign their name to the home.”

Asked by her own lawyer why she had decided to open the home, Pickston teared up while replying, “I had a tragic childhood…I just wanted to give something back”, before the tribunal took a break to give her time to recompose herself.

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”.

But opening the hearing at Warrington Magistrates on January 27, 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, meaning he was not represented in court. 

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 tribunal’s decision about the home’s future is expected to be made in April.