A Barnet-based web site which reunites old school friends this week removed half-a-million messages from its internet pages after a threat of legal action.

The National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) claims former pupils are insulting their teachers on-line at Www.friendsreunited.co.uk which receives six million hits a day.

It threatened legal action against owners Steve and Julie Pankhurst unless they took action. Allegations against teachers appearing on the web site are thought to have ranged from alcoholism to child abuse.

Mr and Mrs Pankhurst, of Milton Avenue, previously introduced an emergency delete button but took the step of removing messages completely after the threat of legal action.

"The message boards have more than half a million messages on them but we've taken them away from the site temporarily while we decide how to prevent the system from being abused," said Mr Pankhurst.

"We introduced an emergency delete button two months ago so individuals could delete any abusive messages they may find but I must stress overall users log on in good faith to reunite with old friends."

The site, which contains a database of 40,000 current and former UK schools and universities, was launched in August last year. Members, of whom there are 2.7million, can sign up for free but pay a yearly fee for contact details of their former classmates.

Mr Pankhurst added: "I've tried to contact the union to sort this matter out but no-one has got back to me. Why do they want to try to shut something down which is 99.99 per cent positive?

"We're now contemplating setting up a vetting system whereby we read every message first before they go up on the board which is a lot of work with 550,000 memories on there now."

November 15, 2001 13:00