The six issues that are annoying Kirstie Allsopp the most

‘I do not know what is controversial and what is not – it may look like I do, but I genuinely don’t,’ says Kirstie Allsopplooking back on a year when she’s kept headline writers busy with her takedown of Labour’s housing policy, scorning of working from home and complaints against striking train drivers.

She has also dismissed AIcriticised ‘iPad kids’ glued to screens and ticked off MPs over stamp duty being a ‘sin tax’. And that list is not exhaustive.

It’s easy to assume that an hour in the company of the TV presenter and property expert would involve a tirade of angry opinions, but when we meet, Allsopp, 54, is charming, funny and welcoming, looking relaxed and positively youthful in a red dress. She has even put a plate of pastries in front of me on her dining room table – a first in my years of interviewing – and is as happy to listen as she is to talk.

She’ll soon be back on our screens hosting Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas but it’s what’s going on in the rest of the country that got her really riled up this year. Here are the issues annoying her the most:

Stamp duty

Our talk quickly turns to the property market because your reporter can’t sell his house after months. This hits one of her campaigns of the year – the death of the property market and unfair stamp duty. The day after we meet, she’ll make these points to the Treasury Committee.

‘When did we start making buying property a sin?’ says Allsopp, exasperated. ‘We have alcoholwe have cigarettes, we have airline flights, we have cars, we have all these things where we pay these sin taxes. And it makes no sense. It’s not bringing in any revenue because nobody is moving. The revenue should be VAT on the towels and sheets and toasters that you buy for your new house.’

She was delighted by Angela Rayner’s stamp-duty scandal in September, where the housing secretary resigned after underpaying stamp duty on a flat in Hove by £40,000. ‘I don’t think MPs understand this stuff. I’ve no beef with Angela Rayner trying to get away with it. Good on her. I’ve a problem with the fact that she did that while imposing these regulations on everybody else.’

Allsopp has solutions: a small tax on buying and a small tax on selling to get round the discount for first-time buyers. And, perhaps surprisingly, she’s also in favour of hiking income tax. ‘We won’t stop handing out more money than we can afford until everyone is paying more taxes,’ she says with a shrug.

Universal credit

She is amazed that the last government moved applying for Universal Credit online, which means that no one has to attend the Job Centre any more. ‘You can continue to get it every single week, with no one looking you up and down and seeing what you’re up to,’ she says. ‘Some people, particularly young people, need to be challenged. If you are on unemployment benefit, you should be doing something.’

TFL Freedom Pass

In true Allsopp style, a few days after we meet, she finds herself embroiled in a feud with children’s author Michael Rosen, and accusing pensioners who get free public transport in London of ‘bankrupting our country’. The cost of providing the Transport for London (TFL) Freedom Pass to people over 66 is set to jump by about £40 million to £372 million next year and could near £500 million by 2030.

Never afraid of speaking her mind, Allsopp hit out at the 79-year-old We’re Going On A Bear Hunt author Rosen on X, after he posted that his Freedom Pass was not working and that he couldn’t get a replacement. Allsopp replied: ‘A writer so successful that today is a day dedicated to him in schools all over the country thinks it is reasonable that he travels for free due to his age. People have to stop taking things they do not need, it is wrong and it is bankrupting our country.’

Risk-averse parenting

While certainly eventful, this year has been more joyful than 2024, when Allsopp lost her father Charles, and she was contacted by Kensington and Chelsea social services after she tweeted about her then 15-year-old son Oscar going interrailing.

‘I don’t put my children in the public eye, probably because I started off with stepchildren and I was very, very careful to respect their privacy,’ she says. Her husband Ben Andersen had two children from his previous marriage, Hal, 23, and Orion, 26, and they’ve had two sons together: Oscar, now 17, and 19-year-old Bay. ‘But I was so proud of Oscar for organising his own trip and even though he advised me not to, I tweeted about his adventure. Then someone called social services…’ Defending her decision at the time, Allsopp said that children are being exposed to more dangers on their mobile phones than they ever could be through travel and claimed that ‘risk-averse’ parenting is contributing to a crisis in young people’s mental health.

Allsopp insists now that she’s a ‘total softy’ as a mother, despite her public exasperation with indulgent parenting. ‘When I was eight, I’d head out for the day with a honey sandwich and a bottle of bitter lemon with orange squash in it,’ she says. ‘Off I’d go and try not to die, basically. How has it changed so much in a generation?’

Disability payments for ADHD

Hearing her race through the headline topics of the year I’m curious how her mind works. ‘The great fashion at the moment is ADHD,’ she muses. ‘Everyone has a child with ADHD, people are enraged about disability payments related to ADHD and I’m one of them.

‘I think there is a certain type of multiple observation I have that I don’t want to label. I haven’t been diagnosed. I believe that neurodiversity is essential. We all have our own type of brains. If I was in a stone-age camp and had to look out for wildebeest, they’d get past me. But once they were in the camp, I’d come up with a cunning plan to get them out,’ she says.

Weddings

As well as wading into controversial waters, 2025 has had its highs for Allsopp. It marked the 25th anniversary of Location, Location, Locationthe show that plucked her from her property-search business and gave her a career in TV – including Love It Or List It, Kirstie’s Celebrity Craft Masters and Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas. It was also the year she and partner Ben finally married after 21 years together. The wedding was in January in Mayfair’s Grosvenor Chapel, where her grandparents and parents were married.

‘We should have got married ages ago but lots of things occurred, which are not in the public domain, to do with children or my stepchildren, or Ben’s ex-wife, and it drifted,’ she says. ‘We didn’t have a wedding list, we didn’t invite people till the Monday and we got married on the Thursday. I didn’t walk down the aisle and I didn’t have a bouquet. We did have my nieces and nephews dress up, because it was fun for them, but my sister left my niece’s dress in the car park near where she lives. There was no hen do or stag night, no foreign trips and no expectation for outfits.

‘I think it’s important that you don’t ask too much of your friends when you get married. But you know what? It was really nice. It was really, really nice. I’m glad we did it and almost a year later I’m happy to report it’s going very well.’

Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas is on Channel 4, Thursday 4 December at 8pm