Gino D'Acampo under fire for trying to close public footpath near his mansion

Gino D’Acampo has upset his neighbours by applying to have a footpath beside his £1.25m mansion closed to the public.

The TV chef claims the public footpath - which leads to a doctors’ surgery in his home town of Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire - invites an invasion of his family’s privacy and has lobbied the local council to have it closed. He originally applied to have the path closed completely two years ago, but withdrew that application. The 43-year-old Italian cook has now applied for the footpath to be closed at weekends.

D’Acampo told the MailOnline: “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.”

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The Limes Court GP surgery and pharmacy located behind the TV star’s four storey Georgian townhouse are open one Saturday per month and local residents argue the path provides “vital” access from the High Street.

D’Acampo - famous for cooking a rat on I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! 10 years ago - bought the house in 2016 and lives there with his wife of 25 years Jessica and their three children.

Jessica wrote in a letter to the local council: “I just want my family which includes young children to feel safe and secure and have privacy.”

She claimed: “A couple of times I have had people in my garden taking pictures and there are frequent knocks on the door with people asking for pictures of Gino or signed books.

“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 without concern about my family or our visitors' car driving up and down the driveway.”

The path is guarded by high, steel gates, as is the entrance to the driveway, and the property is protected from view by a high wooden fence.

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A sign on the entrance to the path warns walkers it is not a “right of way” and is only open with the “agreement” of the D’Acampo family. It also orders them they not allowed “not allowed to stop' and that they are being filmed.

Resident Nick Brown, 72, told MailOnline: “That Gino has been on the telly a couple of times and now he thinks he owns the place. He only moved here a couple of years ago and now he thinks he owns the town. Who does he think he is?

“The lane is an historic walkway. It has been in use for years – hundreds of years probably.”

Another resident wrote in a letter to the council the the steel gates “intimidated”people and was a “strategy to deter users from the path”.