Neighbours boil over at chef Gino’s bid to shut footpath
HE might be the chirpy celebrity chef who brings a bright smile to breakfast cookery shows.
But Gino D’Acampo has cooked up a storm with residents near his £1.25million home after a bid to close a ‘vital’ footpath to the public.
The Italian chef claims his family are ‘harassed’ by fans, who turn up at his Hertfordshire mansion to ask for photos and autographs.
He wants the pathway next to the Grade II-listed house in Hoddesdon to be closed at the weekend so his family can feel ‘secure’.
But locals say the ‘historic’ footpath provides access to a GP surgery and pharmacy, and accused the celebrity chef of acting like ‘he owns the town’.
Mr D’Acampo, 43, told Mail Online: ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about. You can see the path is open. I only want to have it closed at weekends when it’s not being used.’ The TV personality has lived at the property with his wife Jessica and their three children since 2016.
The family claim they have seen fans in the garden taking pictures – and once found a stranger standing in their hallway.
The couple first applied to have the footpath closed entirely two years ago, but later withdrew the application. In a letter to Broxbourne Borough Council at the time, Mrs D’Acampo said: ‘I just want my family, which includes young children, to feel safe and secure and have privacy.’ They have now applied to have the path closed at the weekend only.
Yesterday Mrs D’Acampo said: ‘I often get abused in the driveway and it is obviously dangerous for members of the public to treat the driveway effectively as a public space. There are frequent knocks on the door with people asking for pictures of Gino or signed books.’
Signs on the property warn the path is not a ‘right of way’ and is only open with the ‘agreement’ of Mr D’Acampo.
In a letter to the council, one resident, who had used the pathway since the 1990s, claimed the TV chef had recently installed ‘huge gates’ as a ‘strategy’ to deter the public from passing. They said: ‘From my own observations and experience... the manoeuvres people had to make to negotiate the gates was considerably dangerous and impossible for people with disabilities to use.’
Nick Brown, a 72-year-old retired ground-worker, said: ‘That Gino has been on the telly a couple of times and now ... he thinks he owns the town. The lane is a historic walkway. It’s the best way to get to the surgery. It takes about five times longer to walk around to the surgery.’
In a letter, practice manager Christine Price said: ‘My understanding is the footpath should be open while the surgery is open and this has been long standing since 1991 when the surgery first moved here. However, I completely understand weekends are precious for family time and I don’t think keeping the footpath closed at weekends would cause too much of a problem for us.’