Former Apprentice star Luisa Zissman was riding her horse in the 43-acre grounds of her home when she received a message that someone was trying to fly a drone over her property.
‘My instinct was that it was paparazzi, so I was freaking out a bit wondering whether something awful had happened,’ she recalls.
At the gates of the 37-year-old’s Hertfordshire home was something altogether more unexpected when she investigated: a self-styled ‘drone auditor’ – there, he claimed, to legitimately take aerial footage of her property.
What happened next went viral on social media. An increasingly exasperated Luisa and several of her employees spent 15 minutes asking the ‘auditor’ to leave, until she lost her patience and threatened to shoot his drone out of the sky and make a citizen’s arrest.
The entire exchange, caught on video, was subsequently uploaded to the YouTube channel of one H Audit – later revealed to be 23-year-old hotel chef Harry Holton.
As it began racking up thousands of views, Luisa was left feeling shaken by the unexpected and unwarranted intrusion into her private life.
‘I felt violated on my own property,’ she told the Mail. ‘Everyone’s home is their sanctuary; whether you live on a huge estate or in a studio flat, everyone deserves to feel secure within their home environment.
‘We live in frightening times where, if you have any kind of wealth, it’s easy to feel vulnerable – then suddenly you have someone threatening that they’re going to fly a drone over where you live. I defy anyone not to feel anxious about that.’
Luisa and several of her employees spent 15 minutes asking the ‘auditor’ to leave, until she lost her patience and threatened to shoot his drone out of the sky and make a citizen’s arrest
The footage was shared online by the YouTuber and it went viral
Ms Zissman posted a picture of Harry Holton on her property in Northamptonshire and shared it onlin e
Luisa’s experience has highlighted a growing, sinister phenomenon in which these so-called ‘auditors’ criss-cross the country armed with drones, bodycams and GoPros to film around and over properties
Quite so, not least because Luisa’s experience has highlighted a growing, sinister phenomenon in which these so-called ‘auditors’ criss-cross the country armed with drones, bodycams and GoPros to film around and over properties.
Their targets aren’t always country estates – police stations, government buildings and businesses have also been filmed as they claim, for instance, they are testing a site’s ‘compliance with privacy laws’ or health and safety regulations, even though they have no official powers.
In reality, however, most are aiming for something else: what Luisa calls ‘rage bait’, meaning they hope to provoke a confrontation with angry occupants, film it and upload it to social media platforms such as YouTube or TikTok, which can bring in thousands of pounds of advertising revenue.
Those with the most popular channels can reportedly earn £5,000 from each of their most highly viewed clips.
‘It’s incredibly cynical,’ Luisa says. ‘As with my case, these people usually make a point of letting you know they are there, claiming they are being polite. But in fact it’s a device to make you react, because that’s what gets the clicks.’
The more indignant the landowner, the better.
It is perhaps little surprise that this disquieting new craze started in the US, where practitioners claimed falsely to be undertaking ‘first amendment audits’ to test if a site meets its constitutional obligations.
In the past few years it has migrated to the UK, with dozens of ‘auditors’ – most of whom hide behind social media epithets to protect their privacy, a courtesy they do not extend to those they film – attracting subscriber lists in the hundreds of thousands (recent research suggested YouTubers earn around £2.50 to £4.10 for every 1,000 views of a video through advertising).
In the past few years it has migrated to the UK, with dozens of ‘auditors’ – most of whom hide behind social media epithets to protect their privacy, a courtesy they do not extend to those they film
Luisa took part in the ninth series of The Apprentice where she finished runner-up to Leah Totton in the final
A row between Luisa Zissman and a YouTuber took a bizarre twist after The Apprentice star claimed to have tracked down his house
Luisa later told her 688,000 followers she had ‘just been to Harry’s house’ as she warned: ‘Oh this petty Polly will not let sleeping dogs lie’
Apprentice star Luisa Zissman was involved in an extraordinary bust-up with the YouTuber after he tried to fly a drone over her country estate
One of the most popular goes by the moniker Auditing Britain on his YouTube channel, which has 317,000 subscribers and 747 videos, while Pure Audits and DJ Audits have 27,000 and 218,000 subscribers respectively.
By these standards Harry Holton’s H Audit channel is relatively small fry, with just 15,000 followers, but it is still littered with angry confrontational videos of attempts to take pictures with drones circling private property.
In the past year alone he has attempted to fly his drone over Aston Villa football club’s training ground, while his most viewed video is provocatively entitled Drone Destruction, Above The Law.
Garnering more than 124,000 views, it shows him targeting the gated Grade I-listed stately home Apethorpe Palace in Northamptonshire – once owned by Queen Elizabeth I – where he engages in an angry confrontation with one of the owners.
The Mail has learned that the day before he went to Luisa’s property, he visited a Cotswolds estate near Highgrove, residence of King Charles and Queen Camilla, while Luisa has received dozens of emails from others who say they have been similarly targeted.
It’s why the mother of three, who runs a series of businesses and also hosts the successful podcast LuAnna, is speaking out. ‘I normally don’t draw attention to my home and protect my privacy fiercely, but I feel so outraged that some little twerp felt he could invade my home and my security in this way.’
It was shortly after lunch on February 28 when Luisa learned that Holton had arrived on a bike outside her grade II-listed property, which she bought four years ago with her second husband, a businessman and entrepreneur.
Even at the gates, Harry Holton was trespassing as the couple own the 100 metres of land between the estate and main road, marked with a sign reading ‘private property’. ‘He was clearly aware of that, as he actually filmed the sign as he arrived,’ Luisa says.
In the past year alone he has attempted to fly his drone over Aston Villa football club’s training ground, while his most viewed video is provocatively entitled Drone Destruction, Above The Law (stock image)
Holton is part of the ‘auditors’ craze that has swept across Britain and has previously attempted to fly his drone over Premier League side Aston Villa’s training ground (pictured)
The vlogger’s social media channels are littered with angry confrontational videos of failed attempts to take pictures while he is on private property
Having buzzed the intercom, Holton – sporting a hood and refusing to show his face to the camera – told the housekeeper he ‘just wanted to let them know he was going to fly a drone’ over the house.
‘She said he couldn’t because it was private property, to which he replied that actually he could,’ Luisa says. ‘When asked his name he said he didn’t have to give that information, which seems a clear attempt to provoke a reaction.’
Over the next 15 minutes, six other people, among them two full-time security guards, asked Holton to leave, a request repeated by Luisa when she too arrived.
‘I very politely asked him to leave several times, telling him that he was on private property. He said: ‘When you’ve finished talking, I’ll tell you what I’m doing.’ And that really wound me up – it was so cocky and provocative.’
It was at this stage that Luisa threatened to shoot his drone out the sky and perform a citizen’s arrest for trespass.
‘The Italian in me came out,’ she laughs. ‘I grabbed the handlebars of his bike and told him I would keep him there until the police arrived because this was aggravated trespassing,’ she says.
‘He then grabbed both my arms and rammed me with his bike, so I took one step back and he just fell over.’
In his subsequent footage, Holton had edited the film to make it look like she had pushed him. ‘The use of edits means they don’t always give a true, chronological record of what happened,’ says Luisa, who then chased Holton to the end of the drive, from where he defiantly launched his drone.
When Luisa called the police, an officer asked if she’d heard of an ‘auditor’. ‘When I said I hadn’t, she said they had to deal with them all the time because they kept filming at the police station.’
The drone and controller are pictured on the pavement after the clash which was posted online
After DJ Audits began to film the chemical site using his GoPro and drone, a company staffer (pictured) swiftly came out of the workplace to confront him and question his right to record
More staff were seen rushing out to confront the YouTuber and asking him to leave, in one of a soaring number of online videos posted by self-styled ‘auditors’ filming outside buildings
Another account, called Auditing Britain, has 276,000 subscribers and includes clips including this confrontation between the YouTuber and police in Kensington, west London
Certainly, it seems the auditing phenomenon has become so widespread that last year the National Police Chiefs’ Council issued officers with official guidance on how to handle the ‘increasing number of reported incidents’.
The advice lists even Ministry of Defence sites as being targets, explaining the ‘auditors’ ‘appear to provoke staff and site security into potentially embarrassing reactions, often asserting that staff are overstepping legal boundaries’.
It continues: ‘They are also well versed in their own rights and often cite legislation in their interactions with staff. Any perception they are under police surveillance is likely to be challenged robustly and, potentially, publicly.’
Yet as the advice makes clear, unless an officer believes the ‘auditor’ to be a genuine security risk, there is little that can be done from a criminal law perspective, a position underlined to the Mail this week by both the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and legal experts.
‘No one owns the airspace above any private property,’ says Jonathan Nicholson, head of strategic projects at the CAA.
There are restrictions above sensitive sites such as airports, nuclear power stations or military bases and for drones which weigh more than 250g, he says. ‘However, those under that weight or without a camera have even more freedoms in built-up areas.
‘Simply flying a drone over somebody else’s property of itself does not constitute a trespass,’ says Rob Nicholson, whose law firm Ashfords recently published advice on drone ‘auditors’.
He says it comes down to what is ‘reasonable’. An Amazon drone delivering a parcel, say, isn’t trespassing but ‘a drone that is specifically there to take photographs of the property or people in or around it’ is not considered reasonable under the Civil Aviation Act. In those circumstances a landowner could seek an injunction – though by then the ‘auditor’ is likely to have moved on to his next quarry, anyway.
Little wonder, given the apparent difficulties of bringing charges, that Luisa decided to give H Audit a taste of his own medicine
Harry Holton (pictured) loads content to his social media channels in his spare time away from his job as a chef at a hotel near his home in Rugby in Warwickshire
Holton trained at Rugby College on a professional cookery course
Neighbours in the cul-de-sac where Holton lives had little clue about his alternative life away from working at a local hotel
Victims will find data protection laws more helpful, says Rob. ‘In most instances, breaches of privacy cannot be justified and the content host can be asked to take material down from the internet.’
A spokesman for the Information Commissioner confirmed: ‘Any individuals or organisations using a device for professional or commercial purposes are controllers for any personal data that the drone captures – and therefore are required to comply with data protection law.’
If they are found to have broken such laws, they can be liable for fines in the millions of pounds. Yet in reality the law has been slow to catch up with this new practice. So far only one ‘auditor’ has been brought before a judge – YouTube vlogger Lee Tench.
In December 2021, the then 35-year-old was given a criminal behaviour order at Crewe Magistrates’ Court after admitting aggravated trespass for continually filming police cars and posting footage online.
Little wonder, given the apparent difficulties of bringing charges, that Luisa decided to give H Audit a taste of his own medicine.
Appealing for information from her own huge social media following, it was not long before someone advised her exactly who her ‘auditor’ was and where he lived – which, as it happened, was just a short drive away from where she was playing polo two days later.
‘So afterwards, I went around to his house,’ she says. ‘I didn’t knock on the door and I was very cautious not to set foot on his property, but I just wanted him to know I’d been there to psych him out a bit.’ It seemed to work: Holton has now taken down the video relating to her property.
Other ‘auditors’ insist that what they are doing is for the public good: while most of those contacted by the Mail this week did not respond to requests for comment, DJ Audits insisted in a lengthy response that his footage was in the public interest and ‘protected by journalistic exemption’.
Last year, the man behind Kent Audit, an account with 11,500 subscribers, told news site Kent Online that his work was ‘about holding people to account’ and that he was stunned people were ‘triggered’ by his actions in a ‘heavily surveilled country where people unquestioningly accept the presence of CCTV and dashcams’.
It is hard to square this apparent do-gooding with Kent Audit’s most recent footage, which shows him filming outside the offices of a flooring company while clearly enjoying the ire of a warden asking him to stop.
Difficult, too, to see anything public spirited in the actions of ‘auditor’ DJE Media – aka bodybuilder Curtis Arnold – who was unmasked by the Mail in 2023 as the man who filmed the moment missing Lancashire mum Nicola Bulley’s body was found in the River Wyre.
Certainly, any notion of public interest is greeted with derision by Luisa, who believes that the reality is almost always far less noble than that. ‘They’re just exploiting a loophole for clicks,’ she says. ‘It’s not in the public interest to see my house, nor anybody else’s, let alone their children playing in their garden.
‘By doing it to me, I believe [Harry Holton] has put me and the safety of my family at risk.
‘I’ve had nasty messages and other unpleasant things – and that’s the type of thing that happens when stupid people do stupid things and don’t care about the consequences.’
It’s one reason that, in the wake of her experience, she is in the process of petitioning Parliament to change the law to prohibit drones flying over private property as well as banning publication of any footage taken. ‘The law needs to play catch-up,’ she says.
Until such a time as that happens, however, it may be best to heed the advice of Rob Nicholson: ‘However tempting it may be, just don’t engage.’
Additional reporting: Simon Trump
