However, parents should be wary of their children using their house to throw a party as new research from Sainsbury's Home Insurance reveals that parties held by children in the parental home are responsible for £16.8 million worth of damage to homes each year.

Furthermore, the research showed that around 54,000 parties – 8.6 per cent of all those held by children – are thrown each year in parents' homes without their permission and that these alone are responsible for up to £1.4 million of damage each year, be that structural or to decorative and personal items.

And if a child does hold a party in the parental home the research indicates that there is a more than one in three chance that damage of some sort will be caused. While for just over 1 million parents, the damage was limited to less than £100, the consequences can be hard on the wallet, with 17,000 parents admitting that parties for their children in the past five years had resulted in damage costing between £1,000 and £5,000 each. Some 124,000 parents said that they did not know how much the damage had cost.

Sainsbury's Home Insurance is warning that homeowners may not be fully covered should their children host parties, especially if they use social networking sites, such as Bebo or Facebook, to extend invitations.

Neil Laird, Sainsbury's Home Insurance Manager, commented: "The rise of sites such as Facebook and Bebo has dramatically changed the way teenagers in particular invite 'friends' to their parties. It's not uncommon to have parties with many hundreds of people attending and when such events get out of hand some insurers may suggest that the homeowner failed to take due care of the property and could refuse to pay up.

"We would encourage parents to warn their children of the potential pitfalls of throwing a party in their home and particularly of inviting people that they do not know well."